Miss Prudence. Mrs. Nathaniel Conklin
"Oh, Marjie," exclaimed Linnet, "peel one whole, be careful and don't break it, and throw it over your right shoulder and see what letter comes."
"Why?" asked Magorie, selecting a large, fair apple to peel.
"I'll tell you when it comes," answered Linnet, seriously.
With an intent face, and slow, careful fingers, Marjorie peeled the handsome apple without breaking the coils of the skin, then poised her hand and gave the shining, green rings a toss over her shoulder to the oilcloth.
"S! S! Oh! what a handsome S!" screamed Linnet.
"Well, what does it mean?" inquired Marjorie, interestedly.
"Oh, nothing, only you will marry a man whose name begins with S," said Linnet, seriously.
"I don't believe I will!" returned Marjorie, contentedly. "Do you believe
I will, mother?"
Mrs. West was lifting a deliciously browned pumpkin pie from the oven, she set it carefully on the table beside Marjorie's yellow dish of quartered apples and then turned to the oven for its mate.
"Now cut one for me," urged Linnet gleefully.
"But I don't believe it," persisted Marjorie, picking among the apples in the basket at her feet; "you don't believe it yourself."
"I never knew it to come true," admitted Linnet, sagely, "but S is a common letter. There are more Smiths in the world than any one else. A woman went to an auction and bought a brass door plate with Smith on it because she had six daughters and was sure one of them would marry a Smith."
"And did one?" asked Maijorie, in her innocent voice. Linnet was sure her lungs were made of leather else she would have burst them every day laughing at foolish little Marjorie.
"The story ended there," said Linnet.
"Stories always leave off at interesting places," said Marjorie, guarding
Linnet's future with slow-moving fingers. "I hope mine won't."
"It will if you die in the middle of it," returned Linnet
Linnet was washing the baking dishes at the sink.
"No, it wouldn't, it would go on and be more interesting," said Marjorie, in her decided way; "but I do want to finish it all."
"Be careful, don't break mine," continued Linnet, as Marjorie gave the apple rings a toss. "There! you have!" she cried disappointedly. "You've spoiled my fortune, Marjie."
"Linnet! Linnet!" rebuked her mother, shutting the oven door, "I thought you were only playing. I wouldn't have let you go on if I had thought you would have taken it in earnest."
"I don't really," returned Linnet, with a vexed laugh, "but I did want to see what letter it would be."
"It's O," said Marjorie, turning to look over her shoulder.
"Rather a crooked one," conceded Linnet, "but it will have to do."
"Suppose you try a dozen times and they all come different," suggested practical Marjorie.
"That proves it's all nonsense," answered her mother.
"And suppose you don't marry anybody," Marjorie continued, spoiling Linnet's romance, "some letter, or something like a letter has to come, and then what of it?"
"Oh, it's only fun," explained Linnet.
"I don't want to know about my S" confessed Marjorie. "I'd rather wait and find out. I want my life to be like a story-book and have surprises in the next chapter."
"It's sure to have that," said her mother. "We mustn't try to find out what is hidden. We mustn't meddle with our lives, either. Hurry providence, as somebody says in a book."
"And we can't ask anybody but God," said Marjorie, "because nobody else knows. He could make any letter come that he wanted to."
"He will not tell us anything that way," returned her mother.
"I don't want him to," said Marjorie.
"Mother, I was in fun and you are making serious," cried Linnet with a distressed face.
"Not making it dreadful, only serious," smiled her mother.
"I don't see why the letter has to be about your husband," argued
Marjorie, "lots of things will happen to us first"
"But that is exciting," said Linnet, "and it is the most of things in story-books."
"I don't see why," continued Marjorie, unconvinced, turning an apple around in her fingers, "isn't the other part of the story worth anything?"
"Worth anything!" repeated Linnet, puzzled.
"Doesn't God care for the other part?" questioned the child. "I've got to have a good deal of the other part."
"So have all unmarried people," said her mother, smiling at the quaint gravity of Marjorie's eyes.
"Then I don't see why—" said Marjorie.
"Perhaps you will by and by," her mother replied, laughing, for Marjorie was looking as wise as an owl; "and now, please hurry with the apples, for they must bake before tea. Mr. Woodfern says he never ate baked apple sauce anywhere else."
Marjorie hoped he would not stay a whole week, as he proposed, if she had to cut the apples. And then, with a shock and revulsion at herself, she remembered that her father had read at worship that morning something about giving even a cup of cold water to a disciple for Christ's sake.
Linnet laughed again as she stooped to pick up the doubtful O and crooked S from the oilcloth.
But the letters had given Marjorie something to think about.
I had decided to hasten over the story of Marjorie's childhood and bring her into her joyous and promising girlhood, but the child's own words about the "other part" that she must have a "good deal" of have changed my mind. Surely God does care for the "other part," too.
And I wonder what it is in you (do you know?) that inclines you to hurry along and skip a little now and then, that you may discover whether Marjorie ever married Hollis? Why can't you wait and take her life as patiently as she did?
That same Saturday evening Marjorie's mother said to Marjorie's father, with a look of perplexity upon her face,
"Father, I don't know what to make of our Marjorie."
He was half dozing over the Agriculturist; he raised his head and asked sharply, "Why? What has she done now?"
Everybody knew that Marjorie was the apple of her father's eye.
"Nothing new! Only everything she does is new. She is two Marjories, and that's what I can't make out. She is silent and she is talkative; she is shy, very shy, and she is as bold as a little lion; sometimes she won't tell you anything, and sometimes she tells you everything; sometimes I think she doesn't love me, and again she loves me to death; sometimes I think she isn't as bright as other girls, and then again I'm sure she is a genius. Now Linnet is always the same; I always know what she will do and say; but there's no telling about Marjorie. I don't know what to make of her," she sighed.
"Then I wouldn't try, wife," said Marjorie's father, with his shrewd smile. "I'd let somebody that knows."
After a while, Marjorie's mother spoke again:
"I don't know that you help me any."
"I don't know that I can; girls are mysteries—you were a mystery once yourself. Marjorie can respond, but she will not respond, unless she has some one to respond to, or some thing to respond to. Towards myself I never find but one Marjorie!"
"That means that you always give her something to respond to!"