ink 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 tithe 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 c