Part 36 (1/2)
”That is because you are _growing_,” said Marjorie, with her wise air. ”I haven't settled down into a real Marjorie yet. I shouldn't know my own picture unless I painted it myself.”
”We are two rather dangerous people, aren't we?” laughed Hollis. ”We will steer clear of each other, as Will would say, until we can come to an understanding.”
”Unless we can help each other,” Marjorie answered. ”But I don't believe you need to be pulled apart, but only to be let alone to grow--that is, if the germ is perfect.”
”A perfect germ!” he repeated. Hollis liked to talk about himself to any one who would help him to self-a.n.a.lysis.
But the slowly moving figures were approaching, the black figure with bent shoulders and a slouched hat, the tall slight figure at his side in light gray with a shawl of white wool across her shoulders and drawn up over her hair, the fleecy whiteness softening the lines of a face that were already softened.
”O, Prudence, how far ahead we are of those two,” exclaimed the school-master, ”and they are wiser than we, perhaps, because they do not know so much.”
”They do not know so much of each other, surely,” she replied with a low laugh. That very day Mr. Holmes had quoted to her, giving it a personal application: ”What she suffered she shook off in the suns.h.i.+ne.”
He had been arguing within himself all day whether or not to destroy that letter in his pocket or to show it to her. Would it give her something else to shake off in the suns.h.i.+ne?
Hollis was wondering if this Marjorie, with her sweet, bright face, her graceful step and air of ladyhood, with modest and quick replies, not at all intruding herself, but giving herself, unconsciously, could be the same half-bashful little girl that he had walked with on a country road four years before; the little girl who fell so far behind his ideal, the little girl so different from city girls; and now, who among his small circle of girlhood at home could surpa.s.s her? And she was dressed so plainly, and there were marks of toil upon her fingers, and even freckles hidden beneath the fresh bloom of her cheek! She would hunt eggs tomorrow and milk the cows, she might not only weed in the garden, but when the potatoes were dug she might pick them up, and even a.s.sist her father in a.s.sorting them. Had he not said that Marjorie was his ”boy” as well as her mother's girl? Had she not taken the place of Morris in all things that a girl could, and had she not taken his place with the master and gone on with Virgil where Morris left off?
”Marjorie, I don't see the _need_ of your going to school?” he was saying when they joined the others.
”Hollis, you are right,” repeated the master, emphatically, ”that is only a whim, but she will graduate the first year, so it doesn't matter.”
”You see he is proud of his work,” said Marjorie, ”he will not give any school the credit of me.”
”I will give you into Miss Prudence's keeping for a term of years, to round you off, to make you more of a woman and less of a student--like herself.”
Marjorie's eyes kindled, ”I wish Morris might hear that! He has been scolding me,--but that would satisfy him.”
After several moments of light talk, if the master ever could be said to encourage light talk, he touched Miss Prudence, detaining her with him, and Marjorie and Hollis walked on together.
Marjorie and Hollis were not silent, nor altogether grave, for now and then her laugh would ripple forth and he would join, with a ringing, boyish laugh that made her forget that he had grown up since that day he brought her the plate.
But the two behind them were altogether grave; Miss Prudence was speaking, for Mr. Holmes had asked her what kind of a day she had had.
”To-morrow is to be one of our anniversaries, you know,” she replied; ”twenty-four years ago--to-morrow--was to have been to me what to-day is to Linnet. I wonder if I _were_ as light hearted as Linnet.”
”You were as blithe a maiden as ever trod on air,” he returned smiling sadly. ”Don't I remember how you used to chase me around that old garden.
When we go back let us try another chase, shall we?”
”We will let Marjorie run and imagine it is I.”
”Prudence, if I regain my strength out there, I am coming home to tell you something, may I?”
”I want you to regain your strength, but I am trembling when I think of anything to be told. Is it anything--about--”
”Jerome? Yes, it is about him and about my self. It is about our last interview when we spoke of you. Do you still believe that he is living?”
”Yes, we are living, why should he not be alive?”
”Do yon know how old he would be?”