Miss Prudence | Page 4

Arithmetic," she answered, taking her fleecy
white hood from the seat behind her.
"Now you look like a sunbeam in a cloud," he said poetically as she
tied it over her brown head. "Oh, ho!" turning to the blackboard, "you
do make handsome figures. Got them all right, did you?"
"I knew how to do them, it was only that--I forgot."
"I don't think you'll forget again in a hurry. And that's a nice looking
slate, too," he added, stepping nearer. "Mother said it was too much of
a strain on your nervous system to write all that."

"I guess I haven't much of a nervous system," returned Marjorie,
seriously; "the girls wrote the words they missed fifty times last Friday
and he warned us about the one hundred to-day. I suppose it will be one
hundred and fifty next Friday. I don't believe I'll ever miss again," she
said, her lips trembling at the mention of it.
"I think I'll have a word or two to say to the master if you do. I wonder
how Linnet would have taken it."
"She wouldn't have missed."
"I'll ask Mr. Holmes to put you over on the boys side if you miss next
week," he cried mischievously, "and make you sit with us all the
afternoon."
"I'd rather write each word five hundred times," she cried vehemently.
"I believe you would," he said good humoredly. "Never mind, Mousie,
I know you won't miss again."
"I'll do my examples to-night and father will help me if I can't do them.
He used to teach in this very schoolhouse; he knows as much as Mr.
Holmes."
"Then he must be a Solomon," laughed the boy.
The stamp of Hollis' boots and the sound of his laughter had frightened
the mouse back into its hiding-place in the chimney; Marjorie would
not have frightened the mouse all day long.
The books were pushed into her satchel, her desk arranged in perfect
order, her rubbers and red mittens drawn on, and she stood ready,
satchel in hand, for her ride on the sled down the slippery hill where the
boys and girls had coasted at noon and then she would ride on over the
snowy road half a mile to the old, brown farmhouse. Her eyes were
subdued a little, but the sunshine lingered all over her face. She knew
Hollis would come.

He smiled down at her with his superior fifteen-year-old smile, she was
such a wee mousie and always needed taking care of. If he could have a
sister, he would want her to be like Marjorie. He was very much like
Marjorie himself, just as shy, just as sensitive, hardly more fitted to
take his own part, and I think Marjorie was the braver of the two. He
was slow-tempered and unforgiving; if a friend failed him once, he
never took him into confidence again. He was proud where Marjorie
was humble. He gave his services; she gave herself. He seldom
quarrelled, but never was the first to yield. They were both mixtures of
reserve and frankness; both speaking as often out of a shut heart as an
open heart. But when Marjorie could open her heart, oh, how she
opened it! As for Hollis, I think he had never opened his; demonstrative
sympathy was equally the key to the hearts of both.
But here I am analyzing them before they had learned they had any self
to analyze. But they existed, all the same.
Marjorie was a plain little body while Hollis was noticeably handsome
with eloquent brown eyes and hair with its golden, boyish beauty just
shading into brown; his sensitive, mobile lips were prettier than any
girl's, and there was no voice in school like his in tone or culture. Mr.
Holmes was an elocutionist and had taken great pains with Hollis
Rheid's voice. There was a courteous gentleness in his manner all his
own; if knighthood meant purity, goodness, truth and manliness, then
Hollis Rheid was a knightly school-boy. The youngest of five rough
boys, with a stern, narrow-minded father and a mother who loved her
boys with all her heart and yet for herself had no aims beyond kitchen
and dairy, he had not learned his refinement at home; I think he had not
learned it anywhere. Marjorie's mother insisted that Hollis Rheid must
have had a praying grandmother away back somewhere. The master
had written to his friend, Miss Prudence Pomeroy, that Hollis Rheid
was a born gentleman, and had added with more justice and penetration
than he had shown in reading Marjorie, "he has too little application
and is too mischievous to become a real student. But I am not looking
for geniuses in a country school. Marjorie and Hollis are bright enough
for every purpose in life