Miss Prudence | Page 5

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 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