Part 35 (1/2)
”What does any man want it for? I want it to give me influence, and I want a luxurious old age.”
”That doesn't strike me as being the highest motives.”
”Probably not, but perhaps the highest motives, as you call them, do not rule my life.”
And she had been praying for him so long.
”Your mother seems to be a happy woman,” was her reply, coming out of a thought that she did not speak.
”She is,” he said, emphatically. ”I wish poor old father were as happy.”
”Do you find many happy people?” she asked.
”I find you and my mother,” he returned smiling.
”And yourself?”
”Not always. I am happy enough today. Not as jubilant as old Will, though. Will has a prize.”
”To be sure he has,” said Marjorie.
”What are you going to do next?”
”Go to that pleasant home in Maple Street with Miss Prudence and go to school.” She was jubilant, too, today, or she would have been if Morris had not gone away with such a look in his eyes.
”You ought to be graduated by this time, you are old enough. Helen was not as old as you.”
”But I haven't been at school at all, yet,” she hastened to say. ”And Helen was so bright.”
”Aren't you bright?” he asked, laughing.
”Mr. Holmes doesn't tell me that I am.”
”What will your mother do?”
”Oh, dear,” she sighed, ”that is what I ask myself every day. But she insists that I shall go, Linnet has had her 'chance' she says, and now it is my turn. Miss Prudence is always finding somebody that needs a home, and she has found a girl to help mother, a girl about my age, that hasn't any friends, so it isn't the work that will trouble me; it is leaving mother without any daughter at all.”
”She is willing to let Linnet go, she ought to be as willing to let you.”
”Oh, she is, and father is, too. I know I don't deserve such good times, but I do want to go. I love Miss Prudence as much as I do mother, I believe, and I am only forty miles from home. Mr. Holmes is about leaving, too. How father will miss _him_! And Morris gone! Mother sighs over the changes and then says changes must needs come if boys and girls will grow up.”
”Where is Mr. Holmes going?”
”To California. The doctor says he must go somewhere to cure his cough.
And he says he will rest and write another book. Have you read his book?”
”No, it is too dry for me.”
”We don't think it is dry; Morris and I know it by heart.”