Miss Prudence did not mean to sigh, she did not mean to be so ungrateful,
there was work enough in her life, why should she long for a holiday
time? Girls must all have their story and the story must run on into
womanhood as hers had, there was no end till it was all lived through.

"When thou passest _through_ the waters I will be with thee."

Miss Prudence dropped her head in her hands; she was going through yet.

Will Rheid was a manly young fellow, just six feet one, with a fine,
frank face, a big, explosive voice, and a half-bashful, half-bold manner
that savored of land and sea. He was as fresh and frolicsome as a sea
breeze itself, as shrewd as his father, and as simple as Linnet.

But--Miss Prudence came back from her dreaming over the past,--would
Linnet go home with her and go to school? Perhaps John Holmes would take
Marjorie under his special tutelage for awhile, until she might come to
her, and--how queer it was for her to be planning about other people's
homes--why might he not take up his abode with the Wests, pay good board,
and not that meagre two dollars a week, take Linnet's seat at the table,
become a pleasant companion for Mr. West through the winter, and, above
all, fit Marjorie for college? And did not he need the social life? He
was left too much to his own devices at old Mrs. Devoe's. Marjorie, her
father with his ready talk, her mother, with a face that held remembrance
of all the happy events of her life, would certainly be a pleasant
exchange for Mrs. Devoe, and Dolly, her aged cat. She would go home to
her own snuggery, with Linnet to share it, with a relieved mind if John
Holmes might be taken into a family. And it was Linnet, after all, who
was to make the changes and she had only been thinking of Marjorie.

When Linnet came to her to kiss her good night, Miss Prudence looked down
into her smiling eyes and quoted:

"'Keep happy, sweetheart, and grow wise.'"

The low murmur of voices reached Miss Prudence in her chamber long after
midnight, she smiled as she thought of Giant Despair and his wife
Diffidence. And then she prayed for the wanderer over the seas, that he
might go to his Father, as the prodigal did, and that, if it were not
wrong or selfish to wish it, she might hear from him once more before she
died.

And then the voices were quiet and the whole house was still.

XI.

GRANDMOTHER.

"Even trouble may be made a little sweet"--_Mrs. Platt._

"Here she is, g