d brightly, relieved that she
might speak at last.

"'Stowed away,' as father says, in the barn, somewhere. Mr. Holmes is not
as strict as he used to be, is he?"

"No, he never was after that. I think he needed to give a lesson to
himself."

"He looks haggard and old."

"I suppose he is old; I don't know how old he is, over forty."

"That _is_ antiquated. You will be forty yourself, if you live long
enough."

"Twenty-two years," she answered seriously; "that is time enough to do a
good many things in."

"I intend to do a good many things," he answered with a proud humility in
his voice that struck Marjorie.

"What--for example?"

"Travel, for one thing, make money, for another."

"What do you want money for?" she questioned.

"What does any man want it for? I want it to give me influence, and I
want a luxurious old age."

"That doesn't strike me as being the highest motives."

"Probably not, but perhaps the highest motives, as you call them, do not
rule my life."

And she had been praying for him so long.

"Your mother seems to be a happy woman," was her reply, coming out of a
thought that she did not speak.

"She is," he said, emphatically. "I wish poor old father were as happy."

"Do you find many happy people?" she asked.

"I find you and my mother," he returned smiling.

"And yourself?"

"Not always. I am happy enough today. Not as jubilant as old Will,
though. Will has a prize."

"To be sure he has," said Marjorie.

"What are you going to do next?"

"Go to that pleasant home in Maple Street with Miss Prudence and go to
school." She was jubilant, too, today, or she would have been if Morris
had not gone away with such a look in his eyes.

"You ought to be graduated by this time, you are old enough. Helen was
not as old as you."

"But I haven't been at school at all, yet," she hastened to say. "And
Helen was so bright."

"Aren't you bright?" he asked, laughing.

"Mr. Holmes doesn't tell me that I am."

"What will your mother do?"

"Oh, dear," she sighed, "that is what I ask myself every day. But she
insists that I shall go, Linnet has had her 'chance' she says, and now it
is my turn. Miss Prudence is always finding somebody that needs a home,
and she has found a girl to help mother, a girl about my age, that hasn't
any friends, so it isn't the work that will trouble me; it is leaving
mother without any daughter at all."

"She is willing to let Linnet go, she ought to be as wi