Miss Prudence Part 40

"Repeat it three times."

She repeated it three times slowly.

"Tell Uncle John and Aunt Prue that that was the last thing I taught you, will you?"

"Yes, papa," catching her breath with a little sob.

"And now run away and come back in a hour and I will read the letters to you. Ask Nurse to tell you when it is an hour."

The child skipped away, and before many minutes he heard her laughing with the children on the beach. With the letters in his hand, and the crumpled handkerchief with the moist red spots tucked away behind him in the chair, he leaned back and closed his eyes. His breath came easily after a little time and he dozed and dreamed. He was a boy again and it was a moonlight night, snow was on the ground, and he was walking home from town besides his oxen; he had sold the load of wood that he had started with before daylight; he had eaten his two lunches of bread and salt beef and doughnuts, and now, cold and tired and sleepy, he was walking back home at the side of his oxen. The stars were s.h.i.+ning, the ground was as hard as stone beneath his tread, the oxen labored on slowly, it seemed as if he would never get home. His mother would have a hot supper for him, and the boys would ask what the news was, and what he had seen, and his little sister would ask if he had bought that piece of ginger bread for her. He stirred and the papers rustled in his fingers and there was a harsh sound somewhere as of a bolt grating, and his cell was small and the bed so narrow, so narrow and so hard, and he was suffocating and could not get out.

"Papa! papa! It's an hour," whispered a voice in his ear. The eyelids quivered, the eyes looked straight at her but did not see her.

"Ah Sing! Ah Sing! Get me to bed!" he groaned.

Frightened at the expression of his face the child ran to call Nurse and her father's man, Ah Sing. Nurse kept her out of her father's chamber all that day, but she begged for her letter and Nurse gave it to her. She carried it in her hand that day and the next, at night keeping it under her pillow.

Before many days the strange uncle came and he led her in to her father and let her kiss his hand, and afterward he read Aunt Prue's soiled letter to her and told her that she and Nurse were going to Aunt Prue's home next week.

"Won't you go, too?" she asked, clinging to him as no one had ever clung to him before.

"No, I must stay here all winter--I shall come to you some time."

She sobbed herself to sleep in his arms, with the letter held fast in her hand; he laid her on her bed, pressing his lips to her warm, wet face, and then went down and out on the beach, pacing up and down until the dawn was in the sky.

XVI.

MAPLE STREET.

"Work for some good, be it ever so slowly."--_Mrs. Osgood_.

The long room with its dark carpet and dark walls was in twilight, in twilight and in firelight, for without the rain was falling steadily, and in the old house fires were needed early in the season. In the time of which little Jeroma had heard, there had been a fire on the hearth in the front parlor, but to-night, when that old time was among the legends, the fire glowed in a large grate; in the back parlor the heat came up through the register. Miss Prudence had a way of designating the long apartment as two rooms, for there was an arch in the centre, and there were two mantels and two fireplaces. Prue's father would have said to-night that the old room was unchanged--nothing had been taken out and nothing new brought in since that last night that he had seen the old man pacing up and down, and the old man's daughter whirling around on the piano stool, as full of hope and trust and enthusiasm as ever a girl could be.

But to-night there was a solitary figure before the fire, with no memories and no traditions to disturb her dreaming, with no memories of other people's past that is, for there was a sad memory or a foreboding in the very droop of her shoulders and in her listless hands. The small, plump figure was arrayed in school attire of dark brown, with linen collar and cuffs, b.u.t.toned boots resting on the fender, and a black silk ap.r.o.n with pockets; there were books and a slate upon the rug, and a slate pencil and lead pencil in one of the ap.r.o.n pockets; a sheet of note paper had slipped from her lap down to the rug, on the sheet of paper was a half-finished letter beginning: "Dear Morris." There was nothing in the letter worth jotting down, she wondered why she had ever begun it. She was nestling down now with her head on the soft arm of the chair, her eyes were closed, but she was not asleep, for the moisture beneath the tremulous eyelids had formed itself into two large drops and was slowly rolling, unheeded, down her cheeks.

The rain was beating noisily upon the window panes, and the wind was rising higher and higher; as it lulled for a moment there was the sound of a footfall on the carpet somewhere and the door was pushed open from the lighted hall.

"Don't you want to be lighted up yet, Miss Marjorie?"

"No, Deborah, thank you! I'll light the lamps myself."

"Young things like to sit in the dark, I guess," muttered old Deborah, closing the door softly; adding to herself: "Miss Prudence used to, once on a time, and this girl is coming to it."

After that for a little time there was no sound, save the sound of the rain, and, now and then, the soft sigh that escaped Marjorie's lips.

How strange it was, she reasoned with herself, for her to care at all!

What if Hollis did not want to answer that last letter of hers, written more than two months ago, just after Linnet's wedding day? That had been a long letter; perhaps too long. But she had been so lonesome, missing everybody. Linnet, and Morris, and Mr. Holmes, and Miss Prudence had gone to her grandfather's for the sea bathing, and the girl had come to help her mother, and she had walked over to his mother's and talked about everything to her and then written that long letter to him, that long letter that had been unanswered so long. When his letter was due she had expected it, as usual, and had walked to the post-office, the two miles and a half, for the sake of the letter and having something to do. She could not believe it when the postmaster handed her only her father's weekly paper, she stood a moment, and then asked, "Is that all?" And the next week came, and the next, and the next, and no letter from him; and then she had ceased, with a dull sense of loss and disappointment, to expect any answer at all. Her mother inquired briskly every day if her letter had come and urged her to write a note asking if he had received it, for he might be waiting for it all this time, but shyness and pride forbade that, and afterward his mother called and spoke of something that he must have read in that letter. She felt how she must have colored, and was glad that her father called her, at that moment, to help him sh.e.l.l corn for the chickens.

When she returned to the house, brightened up and laughing, her mother told her that Mrs. Rheid had said that Hollis had begun to write to her regularly and she was so proud of it. "She says it is because you are going away and he wants her to hear directly from him; I guess, too, it's because he's being exercised in his mind and thinks he ought to have written oftener before; she says her hand is out of practice and the Cap'n hates to write letters and only writes business letters when it's a force put. I guess she will miss you, Marjorie."

Marjorie thought to herself that she would.

But Marjorie's mother did not repeat all the conversation; she did not say that she had followed her visitor to the gate and after glancing around to be sure that Marjorie was not near had lowered her voice and said:

"But I do think it is a shame, Mis' Rheid, for your Hollis to treat my Marjorie so! After writing to her four years to give her the slip like this! And the girl takes on about it, I can see it by her looks, although she's too proud to say a word."

"I'm sure I'm sorry," said Mrs. Rheid. "Hollis wouldn't do a mean thing."

"I don't know what you call this, then," Marjorie's mother had replied spiritedly as she turned towards the house.

Mrs. Rheid pondered night and day before she wrote to Hollis what Marjorie's mother had said; but he never answered that part of the letter, and his mother never knew whether she had done harm or good. Poor little Marjorie could have told her, with an indignation that she would have been frightened at; but Marjorie never knew. I'm afraid she would not have felt like kissing her mother good-night if she had known it.

Her father looked grave and anxious that night when her mother told him, as in duty bound she was to tell him everything, how she was arranging things for Marjorie's comfort.

"That was wrong, Sarah, that was wrong," he said.

"How wrong? I don't see how it was wrong?" she had answered sharply.

"Then I cannot explain to you, Marjorie isn't hurt any; I don't believe she cares half as much as you do?"

"You don't know; you don't see her all the time."

"She misses Linnet and Morris, and perhaps she grieves about going away.

You remind me of some one in the Bible--a judge. He had thirty sons and thirty daughters and he got them all married! It's well for your peace of mind that you have but two."

"It's no laughing matter," she rejoined.

"No, it is not," he sighed, for he understood Marjorie.

How the tears would have burned dry on Marjorie's indignant cheeks had she surmised one t.i.the of her mother's remonstrance and defence; it is true she missed his letters, and she missed writing her long letters to him, but she did not miss him as she would have missed Morris had some misunderstanding come between them. She was full of her home and her studies, and she felt herself too young to think grown-up thoughts and have grown-up experiences; she felt herself to be so much younger than Linnet. But her pride was touched, simple-hearted as she was she wanted Hollis to care a little for her letters. She had tried to please him and to be thoughtful about his mother and grandmother; and this was not a pleasant ending. Her mother had watched her, she was well aware, and she was glad to come away with Miss Prudence to escape her mother's keen eyes. Her father had kissed her tenderly more than once, as though he were seeking to comfort her for something. It was _such_ a relief--and she drew a long breath as she thought of it--to be away from both, and to be with Miss Prudence, who never saw anything, or thought anything, or asked any questions. A few tears dropped slowly as she cuddled in the chair with her head on its arm, she hardly knew why; because she was alone, perhaps, and Linnet was so far off, and it rained, and Miss Prudence and her little girl might not come home to-night, and, it might be, because Miss Prudence had another little girl to love.

Miss Prudence had gone to New York, a week ago, to meet the child and to visit the Rheids. The nurse had relatives in the city and preferred to remain with them, but Prue would be ready to come home with Miss Prudence, and it was possible that they might come to-night.

The house had been so lonely with old Deborah it was no wonder that she began to cry! And, it was foolish to remember that Holland plate in Mrs.

Harrowgate's parlor that she had seen to-day when she had stopped after school on an errand for Miss Prudence. What a difference it had made to her that it was that plate on the bracket and not that yellow pitcher.

The yellow pitcher was in fragments now up in the garret; she must show it to Prue some rainy day and tell her about what a naughty little girl she had been that day.

That resolution helped to shake off her depression, she roused herself, went to the window and looked out into darkness, and then sauntered as far as the piano and seated herself to play the march that Hollis liked; Napoleon crossing the Alps. But scarcely had she touched the keys before she heard voices out in the rain and feet upon the piazza.

Deborah's old ears had caught an earlier sound, and before Marjorie could rush out the street door was opened and the travellers were in the hall.

Exclamations and warm embraces, and then Marjorie drew the little one into the parlor and before the fire. The child stood with her grave eyes searching out the room, and when the light from the bronze lamp on the centre table flashed out upon everything she walked up and down the length of the apartment, stopping now and then to look curiously at something.

Marjorie smiled and thought to herself that she was a strange little creature.