Miss Prudence | Page 5

excepting to become leaders."

"Are you going to church, to-night?" Hollis inquired as she seated
herself carefully on the sled.
"In the church?" she asked, bracing her feet and tucking the ends of her
shawl around them.
"Yes; an evangelist is going to preach."
"Evangelist!" repeated Marjorie in a voice with a thrill in it.
"Don't you know what that is?" asked Hollis, harnessing himself into
the sled.
"Oh, yes, indeed," said she. "I know about him and Christian."
Hollis looked perplexed; this must be one of Marjorie's queer ways of
expressing something, and the strange preacher certainly had something
to do with Christians.
"If it were not for the fractions I suppose I might go. I wish I wasn't
stupid about Arithmetic."
"It's no matter if girls are stupid," he said consolingly. "Are you sure
you are on tight? I'm going to run pretty soon. You won't have to earn
your living by making figures."
"Shall you?" she inquired with some anxiety.
"Of course, I shall. Haven't I been three times through the Arithmetic
and once through the Algebra that I may support myself and somebody
else, sometime?"
This seemed very grand to child Marjorie who found fractions a very
Slough of Despond.
"I'm going to the city as soon as Uncle Jack finds a place for me. I
expect a letter from him every night."
"Perhaps it will come to-night," said Marjorie, not very hopefully.

"I hope it will. And so this may be your last ride on Flyaway. Enjoy it
all you can, Mousie."
Marjorie enjoyed everything all she could.
"Now, hurrah!" he shouted, starting on a quick run down the hill. "I'm
going to turn you over into the brook."
Marjorie laughed her joyous little laugh. "I'm not afraid," she said in
absolute content.
"You'd better be!" he retorted in his most savage tone.
The whole west was now in a glow and the glorious light stretched
across fields of snow.
"Oh, how splendid," Marjorie exclaimed breathlessly as the rapid
motion of the sled and the rush of cold air carried her breath away.
"Hold on tight," he cried mockingly, "we're coming to the brook."
Laughing aloud she held on "tight." Hollis was her true knight; she
would not have been afraid to cross the Alps on that sled if he had
asked her to!
She was in a talkative mood to-night, but her horse pranced on and
would not listen. She wanted to tell him about vibgyor. The half mile
was quickly travelled and he whirled the sled through the large gateway
and around the house to the kitchen door. The long L at the back of the
house seemed full of doors.
"There, Mousie, here you are!" he exclaimed. "And don't you miss your
lesson to-morrow."
"To-morrow is Saturday! oh, I had forgotten. And I can go to see
Evangelist to-night."
"You haven't said 'thank you' for your last ride on Flyaway."

"I will when I'm sure that it is," she returned with her eyes laughing.
He turned her over into a snowdrift and ran off whistling; springing up
she brushed the snow off face and hands and with a very serious face
entered the kitchen. The kitchen was long and low, bright with the
sunset shining in at two windows and cheery with its carpeting of red,
yellow and green mingled confusingly in the handsome oilcloth.
Unlike Hollis, Marjorie was the outgrowth of home influences; the
kitchen oilcloth had something to do with her views of life, and her
mother's broad face and good-humored eyes had a great deal more.
Good-humor in the mother had developed sweet humor in the child.
Now I wonder if you understand Marjorie well enough to understand
all she does and all she leaves undone during the coming fifteen or
twenty years?

II.
EVANGELIST.
"The value of a thought cannot be told."--Bailey.
Her mother's broad, gingham back and the twist of iron gray hair low in
her neck greeted her as she opened the door, then the odor of hot
biscuits intruded itself, and then there came a shout from somebody
kneeling on the oilcloth near the stove and pushing sticks of dry wood
through its blazing open door.
"Oh, Marjie, what happened to you?"
"Something didn't happen. I didn't have my spelling or my examples. I
read the "Lucy" book in school instead," she confessed dolefully.
"Why, Marjie!" was her mother's exclamation, but it brought the color
to Marjorie's face and suffused her eyes.

"We are to have company for tea," announced the figure kneeling on
the oilcloth as she banged the stove door. "A stranger; the evangelist
Mr. Horton told us about Sunday."
"I know," said Marjorie. "I've read about him in Pilgrim's Progress; he
showed Christian the way to the Wicket Gate."
Linnet jumped to her feet and