Miss Prudence | Page 6

shook a chip from her apron. "O, Goosie!
Don't you know any better?"
Fourteen-year-old Linnet always knew better.
"Where is he?" questioned Marjorie.
"In the parlor. Go and entertain him. Mother and I must get him a good
supper: cold chicken, canned raspberries, currant jelly, ham, hot biscuit,
plain cake and fruit cake and--butter and--tea."
"I don't know how," hesitated Marjorie.
"Answer his questions, that's all," explained Linnet promptly. "I've told
him all I know and now it's your turn."
"I don't like to answer questions," said Marjorie, still doubtfully.
"Oh, only your age and what you study and--if--you are a Christian."
"And he tells you how if you don't know how," said Marjorie, eagerly;
"that's what he's for."
"Yes," replied her mother, approvingly, "run in and let him talk to you."
Very shyly glad of the opportunity, and yet dreading it inexpressibly,
Marjorie hung her school clothing away and laid her satchel on the
shelf in the hall closet, and then stood wavering in the closet,
wondering if she dared go in to see Evangelist. He had spoken very
kindly to Christian. She longed, oh, how she longed! to find the Wicket
Gate, but would she dare ask any questions? Last Sabbath in church she
had seen a sweet, beautiful face that she persuaded herself must be

Mercy, and now to have Evangelist come to her very door!
What was there to know any better about? She did not care if Linnet
had laughed. Linnet never cared to read Pilgrim's Progress.
It is on record that the first book a child reads intensely is the book that
will influence all the life.
At ten Marjorie had read Pilgrim's Progress intensely. Timidly, with
shining eyes, she stood one moment upon the red mat outside the parlor
door, and then, with sudden courage, turned the knob and entered. At a
glance she felt that there was no need of courage; Evangelist was seated
comfortably in the horse-hair rocker with his feet to the fire resting on
the camp stool; he did not look like Evangelist at all, she thought,
disappointedly; he reminded her altogether more of a picture of Santa
Claus: massive head and shoulders, white beard and moustache, ruddy
cheeks, and, as the head turned quickly at her entrance, she beheld,
beneath the shaggy, white brows, twinkling blue eyes.
"Ah," he exclaimed, in an abrupt voice, "you are the little girl they were
expecting home from school."
"Yes, sir."
He extended a plump, white hand and, not at all shyly, Marjorie laid
her hand in it.
"Isn't it late to come from school? Did you play on the way home?"
"No sir; I'm too big for that"
"Doesn't school dismiss earlier?"
"Yes, sir," flushing and dropping her eyes, "but I was kept in."
"Kept in," he repeated, smoothing the little hand. "I'm sure it was not
for bad behavior and you look bright enough to learn your lessons."
"I didn't know my lessons," she faltered.

"Then you should have done as Stephen Grellet did," he returned,
releasing her hand.
"How did he do?" she asked.
Nobody loved stories better than Marjorie.
Pushing her mother's spring rocker nearer the fire, she sat down,
arranged the skirt of her dress, and, prepared herself, not to "entertain"
him, but to listen.
"Did you never read about him?"
"I never even heard of him."
"Then I'll tell you something about him. His father was an intimate
friend and counsellor of Louis XVI. Stephen was a French boy. Do you
know who Louis XVI was?"
"No, sir."
"Do you know the French for Stephen?"
"No, sir."
"Then you don't study French. I'd study everything if I were you. My
wife has read the Hebrew Bible through. She is a scholar as well as a
good housewife. It needn't hinder, you see."
"No, sir," repeated Marjorie.
"When little Etienne--that's French for Stephen--was five or six years
old he had a long Latin exercise to learn, and he was quite
disheartened."
Marjorie's eyes opened wide in wonder. Six years old and a long Latin
exercise. Even Hollis had not studied Latin.
"Sitting alone, all by himself, to study, he looked out of the window

abroad upon nature in all her glorious beauty, and remembered that
God made the gardens, the fields and the sky, and the thought came to
him: 'Cannot the same God give me memory, also?' Then he knelt at
the foot of his bed and poured out his soul in prayer. The prayer was
wonderfully answered; on beginning to study again, he found himself
master of his hard lesson, and, after that, he acquired learning with
great readiness."
It was wonderful, Marjorie thought, and beautiful, but she could not say
that; she asked instead: "Did he write about it himself?"
"Yes, he has written all about himself."