Miss Prudence. Mrs. Nathaniel Conklin
delightful work. "Stitch, stitch, stitch," would not seem dreadful, at all.
How mysterious and charming it was to board by the seashore with somebody's grandfather! And then, in winter, to go back to some bewildering sort of a fairyland! To some kind of a world where people did not talk all the time about "getting along" and "saving" and "doing without" and "making both ends meet." How Marjorie's soul rebelled against the constant repetition of those expressions! How she thought she would never let her little girls know what one of them meant! If she and her little girls had to be saving and do without, how brave they would be about it, and laugh over it, and never ding it into anybody's ears! And she would never constantly be asking what things cost! Miss Prudence never asked such questions. But she would like to know if that gold pen cost so very much, and that glass inkstand shaped like a pyramid, and all that cream note-paper with maple tassels and autumn leaves and butterflies and ever so many cunning things painted in its left corners. And there was a pile of foolscap on the table, and some long, yellow envelopes, and some old books and some new books and an ivory paper-cutter; all something apart from the commonplace world she inhabited. Not apart from the world her thoughts and desires revelled in; not her hopes, for she had not gotten so far as to hope to live in a magical world like Miss Prudence. And yet when Miss Prudence did not wear white she was robed in deep mourning; there was sorrow in Miss Prudence's magical world.
It was some few moments before the roving eyes could settle themselves upon the paper and pencil she had been sent for; she would have liked to choose a sheet of the thick cream-paper with the autumn leaves painted on it, but that was not for study, and Miss Prudence certainly intended study, although there was fun in her eyes. She selected carefully a sheet of foolscap and from among the pen oils a nicely sharpened Faber number three. With the breath of the room about her, and the beauty and restfulness of it making a glory in her eyes, she ran down to the broad, airy hall.
Glancing into the sitting-room as she passed its partly opened door she discovered her grandfather asleep in his arm-chair and her grandmother sitting near him busy in slicing apples to be strung and hung up in the kitchen to dry! With a shiver of foreboding the child passed the door on tiptoe; suppose her grandmother should call her in to string those apples! The other children never strung them to suit her and she "admired" Marjorie's way of doing them. Marjorie said once that she hated apple blossoms because they turned into dried apples. But that was when she had stuck the darning needle into her thumb.
I'm afraid you will think now that Marjorie is not as sweet as she used to be.
She presented the paper, congratulating herself upon her escape, and Miss Prudence lifted herself in the hammock and took the pencil, holding it in her fingers while she meditated. What a little girl she was when her whiteheaded old teacher had bidden her write this sentence on the blackboard. She wrote it carefully, Marjorie's attentive eyes following each movement of the pencil.
"The persons inside the coach were Mr. Miller a clergyman his son a lawyer Mr. Angelo a foreigner his lady and a little child" In the entire sentence there was not one punctuation mark.
"Read it, please."
Marjorie began to read, then stopped and laughed.
"I can't."
"You wouldn't enjoy a book very much written in that style, would you?"
"I couldn't enjoy it at all. I wouldn't read it"
"Well, if you can't read it, explain it to me. How many persons are in the coach?"
"That's easy enough! There's Mr. Miller, that's one; there's the clergyman, that's two!"
"Perhaps that is only one; Mr. Miller may be a clergyman."
"So he may. But how can I tell?" asked Marjorie, perplexed. "Well, then, his son makes two."
"Whose son?"
"Why, Mr. Miller's!"
"Perhaps he was the clergyman's son," returned Miss Prudence seriously.
"Well, then," declared Marjorie, "I guess there were eight people! Mr. Miller, the clergyman, the son, the lawyer, Mr. Angelo, a foreigner, a lady, and a child!"
"Placing a comma after each there are eight persons," said Miss Prudence making the commas.
"Yes," assented Marjorie, watching her.
Beneath it Miss Prudence wrote the sentence again, punctuating thus:
"The persons inside the conch were Mr. Miller, a clergyman; his son, a lawyer; Mr. Angelo, a foreigner, his lady; and a little child."
"Now how many persons are there inside this coach?"
"Three gentlemen, a lady and child," laughed Marjorie—"five instead of eight. Those little marks have caused three people to vanish."
"And to change occupations."
"Yes, for Mr. Miller is a clergyman, his son a lawyer, and Mr. Angelo has become a foreigner."
The pencil was moving again and the amused, attentive eyes were steadfastly following.
"The persons inside the coach were Mr. Miller; a clergyman, his son; a lawyer, Mr. Angelo; a foreigner, his lady, and a little child."
Marjorie uttered an exclamation; it was so funny!
"Now, Mr. Miller's son is a clergyman instead of himself, Mr. Angelo is a lawyer, and nobody knows whether he is a foreigner or not, and we don't know the foreigner's name, and he has a wife and child."
Miss Prudence smiled over the young eagerness, and rewrote the sentence once again causing Mr. Angelo to cease to be a lawyer and giving the foreigner a wife but no little child.
"O, Miss Prudence, you've made the little thing an orphan all alone in a stage-coach all through the change of a comma to be a semi-colon!" exclaimed Marjorie in comical earnestness. "I think punctuation means ever so much; it isn't dry one bit," she added, enthusiastically.
"You couldn't enjoy Mrs. Browning very well without it," smiled Miss
Prudence.
"I never would know what the 'Cry of the Children' meant, or anything about Cowper's grave, would I? And if I punctuated it myself, I might not get all she meant. I might make a meaning of my own, and that would be sad."
"I think you do," said Miss Prudence; "when I read it to you and the children, there were tears in your eyes, but the others said all they liked was my voice."
"Yes," said Marjorie, "but if somebody had stumbled over every line I shouldn't have felt it so. I know the good there is in studying elocution. When Mr. Woodfern was here and read 'O, Absalom, my son! My son, Absalom!' everybody had tears in their eyes, and I had never seen tears about it before. And now I know the good of punctuation. I guess punctuation helps elocution, too."
"I shouldn't wonder," replied Miss Prudence, smiling at Marjorie's air of having discovered something. "Now, I'll give you something to do while I close my eyes and think awhile."
"Am I interrupting you?" inquired Marjorie in consternation. "I didn't know how I could any more than I can interrupt—"
"God" was in her thought, but she did not give it utterance.
"I shall not allow you," returned Miss Prudence, quietly. "You will work awhile, and I will think and when I open my eyes you may talk to me about anything you please. You are a great rest to me, child."
"Thank you," said the child, simply.
"You may take the paper and change the number of people, or relationship, or professions again. I know it may be done."
"I don't see how."
"Then it will give you really something to do."
Seating herself again on the yellow floor of the porch, within range of Miss Prudence's vision, but not near enough to disturb her, Marjorie bit the unsharpened end of her pencil and looked long at the puzzling sentences on the foolscap. With the attitude