ess he's like a bee. I expect the Widow Devoe can't help wishing he
had stayed to her house."

"He proposed to come himself," said Marjorie, with a proud flash of her
eyes, "and he proposed to teach me himself."

"Oh, yes, to be sure, but she and the cat will miss him all the same."

"It's all sudden."

"[missing text] happen sudden, nowadays. I keep my eyes shut and things
keep whirling around."

Grandmother was seated in an armchair with her feet resting on a
home-made foot stool, clad in a dark calico, with a little piece of gray
shawl pinned closely around her neck, every lock of hair was concealed
beneath a black, borderless silk cap, with narrow black silk strings tied
under her trembling chin, her lips were sunken and seamed, her eyelids
partly dropped over her sightless eyes, her withered, bony fingers were
laboriously pushing the needles in and out through a soft gray wool sock,
every few moments Marjorie took the work from her to pick up a dropped
stitch or two and to knit once around. The old eyes never once suspected
that the work grew faster than her own fingers moved. Once she remarked
plaintively: "Seems to me it takes you a long time to pick up one
stitch."

"There were three this time," returned Marjorie, seriously.

"What does the master learn you about?" asked Mrs. Rheid.

"Oh, the school studies! And I read the dictionary by myself."

"I thought you had some new words."

"I want some good words," said Marjorie.

"Now don't you go and get talking like a book," said grandmother,
sharply, "if you do you can't come and talk to me."

"But you can talk to me," returned Marjorie, smiling, "and that is what I
want. Hollis wrote me that I mustn't say 'guess' and I do forget so
often."

"Hollis is getting ideas," said Hollis' mother; "well, let him, I want
him to learn all he can."

Marjorie was wondering where her own letter to Hollis would come in;
she had stowed away in the storehouse of her memory messages enough
from mother and grandmother to fill one sheet, both given with many
explanations, and before she went home Captain Rheid would come in
and add his word to Hollis. And if she should write two sheets this
time would her mother think it foolish? It was one of Mrs. West's
old-fashioned ways to ask Marjorie to let her read every letter that
she wrote.

With her reserve Marjorie could open her heart more fully to Miss
Prudence than she could to one nearer her; it was easier to tell Mi