have a plan to propose to her by and by."

"Oh, can't you tell us?" entreated Linnet, forgetting her work.

"Not yet."

"Does it concern _us?_" asked Marjorie.

"Yes, both of you."

Two hours since it had "concerned" only Marjorie, but in this hour under
the apple-tree Miss Prudence had been moved to include Linnet, also.
Linnet was not Marjorie, she had mentally reasoned, but she was Linnet
and had her own niche in the world. Was she not also one of her little
sisters that were in the world and not of it?

"When may we know?" questioned Linnet

"That depends. Before I leave your grandfather's, I hope."

"I know it is something good and wonderful, because you thought of it,"
said Marjorie. "Perhaps it is as good as one of our day-dreams coming
true."

"It may be something very like one of them, but the time may not be yet.
It will not do you any harm to know there's something pleasant ahead,
if it can be arranged."

"I do like to know things that are going to happen to us," Linnet
confessed. "I used to wish I could dream and have the dreams come true."

"Like the wicked ancients who used to wrap themselves in skins of beasts
and stay among the graves and monuments to sleep and dream--and in the
temples of the idols, thinking the departed or the idols would foretell
to them in dreams. Isaiah reproves the Jews for doing this. And Sir
Walter Scott, in his notes to 'The Lady of the Lake,' tells us something
about a similar superstition among the Scotch."

"I like to know about superstitions," said Linnet, "but I'd be afraid to
do that."

"Miss Prudence, I haven't read 'The Lady of the Lake'!" exclaimed
Marjorie.

"No, imitator of Buckle, you haven't. But I'll send it to you when I go
home."

"What did Buckle _do_ with all his learning?" inquired Marjorie.

"I haven't told you about half of his learning. He wrote a work of great
learning, that startled the world somewhat, called 'The History of
Civilization,' in which he attempted to prove that the differences
between nations and peoples were almost solely to be attributed to
physical causes that food had more to do with the character of a
nation than faith."

"Didn't the Israelites live on the same food that the Philistines did?"
asked Marjorie, "and didn't--"

"Are you getting ready to refute him? The Jews could not eat pork, you
remember."

"And because they didn't eat pork they believed in one true God!"
exclaimed Marjorie, indignantly. "I don'