Part 59 (1/2)
”Does she know?” asked Marjorie, springing up to greet Miss Prudence.
”Yes; she is very quiet, I have prayed with her twice; and we have talked about his life and his death. She says that it was unselfish to the end.”
”He sent his love to her; did Hollis tell you?”
”I read the letter--I read it twice. She holds it in her hand now.”
”Has the tall man gone?” asked Prue.
”Yes, he did not stay long. Marjorie, you did not bid him good-night.”
”I know it; I did not think.”
”Marjorie, dear;” Miss Prudence opened her arms, and Marjorie crept into them.
”Oh, Aunt Prue, I would not be so troubled, but he wanted to give me something--some little thing he had brought me--because he always did remember me, and I would not even look at it. I don't know what it was. I refused it; and I know he was so hurt. I was almost tempted to take it when I saw his eyes; and then I wanted to be true.”
”Were you true?”
”I tried to be.”
”Then there is nothing to be troubled about. He is comforted for it now.
Don't you want to go down and see his mother?”
”I'm afraid to see her.”
”She will comfort you. She is sure now that G.o.d loves her. I have been trying to teach her, and now G.o.d has taught her so that she can rejoice in his love. Whom the Lord loveth, she says, he chastens; and he knows how he has chastened her. If it were not for his love, Marjorie, what would keep our hearts from breaking?”
”Papa died, too,” said Prue.
Marjorie went down to the parlor. Mrs. Kemlo was sitting at the grate, leaning back in her steamer chair. Marjorie kissed her without a word.
”Marjorie! The girls ought to know. I don't believe I can write.”
”I can. I will write to-night.”
”And copy this letter; then they will know it just as it is. He was with you so long they will not miss him as we do. They were older, and they loved each other, and left him to me. And, Marjorie--”
”Yes'm.”
”Tell them I am going to your mother's as soon as warm weather comes, unless one of them would rather take me home; tell them Miss Prudence has become a daughter to me; I am not in need of anything. Give them my love, and say that when they love their little ones, they must think of how I loved them.”
”I will,” said Marjorie, ”You and mother will enjoy each other so much.”
Marjorie wrote the letters that evening, her eyes so blinded with tears that she wrote very crookedly. No one would ever know what she had lost in Morris. He had been a part of herself that even Linnet had never been.
She was lost without him, and for months wandered in a new world. She suffered more keenly upon the anniversary of the day of the tidings of his death than she suffered that day. Then, she could appreciate more fully what G.o.d had taken from her. But the letters were written, and mailed on her way to school in the morning; her recitations were gone through with; and night came, when she could have the rest of sleep. The days went on outwardly as usual. Prue was daily becoming more and more a delight to them all. Mrs. Kemlo's sad face was sweet and chastened; and Miss Prudence's days were more full of busy doings, with a certain something of a new life about them that Marjorie did not understand. She could almost imagine what Miss Prudence had been twenty years ago.
Despite her lightness of foot, her inspiriting voice, and her _young_ interest in every question that pertained to life and work and study, Miss Prudence seemed old to eighteen-years-old Marjorie. Not as old as her mother; but nearly forty-five was very old. When she was forty-five, she thought, her life would be almost ended; and here was Miss Prudence always _beginning again_.