Miss Prudence - Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
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MISS PRUDENCE
A STORY OF TWO GIRLS' LIVES
By JENNIE M. DRINKWATER
1883
"We are not to lead events but to follow them."--_Epictetus_.
CONTENTS
CHAP
I. AFTER SCHOOL
II. EVANGELIST
III. WHAT "DESULTORY" MEANS
IV. A RIDE, A WALK, A TALK, AND A TUMBLE
V. TWO PROMISES
VI. MARJORIE ASLEEP AND AWAKE
VII. UNDER THE APPLE-TREE
VIII. BISCUITS AND OTHER THINGS
IX. JOHN HOLMES
X. LINNET
XI. GRANDMOTHER
XII. A BUDGET OF LETTERS
XIII. A WEDDING DAY
XIV. A TALK AND ANOTHER TALK
XV. JEROMA
XVI. MAPLE STREET
XVII. MORRIS
XVIII. ONE DAY
XIX. A STORY THAT WAS NOT VERY SAD
XX. "HEIRS TOGETHER"
XXI. MORRIS AGAIN
XXII. TIDINGS
XXIII. GOD'S LOVE
XXIV. JUST AS IT OUGHT TO BE
XXV. THE WILL OF GOD
XXVI. MARJORIE'S MOTHER
XXVII. ANOTHER WALK AND ANOTHER TALE
XXVIII. THE LINNET
XXIX. ONE NIGHT
XXX. THE COSEY CORNER
XXXI. AND WHAT ELSE?
MISS PRUDENCE.
I.
AFTER SCHOOL.
"Our content is our best having."--_Shakespeare_.
Nobody had ever told Marjorie that she was, as somebody says we all
are, three people,--the Marjorie she knew herself, the Marjorie other
people knew, and the Marjorie God knew. It was a "bother" sometimes to
be the Marjorie she knew herself, and she had never guessed there was
another Marjorie for other people to know, and the Marjorie God knew
and understood she did not learn much about for years and years. At
eleven years old it was hard enough to know about herself--her naughty,
absent-minded, story-book-loving self. Her mother said that she loved
story-books entirely too much, that they made her absent-minded and
forgetful, and her mother's words were proving themselves true this very
afternoon. She was a real trouble to herself and there was no one near to
"confess" to; she never could talk about herself unless enveloped in the
friendly darkness, and then the confessor must draw her out, step by
step, with perfect frankness and sympathy; even then, a sigh, or sob, or
quickly drawn breath and half inarticulate expression revealed more than
her spoken words.
She was one of the children that are left to themselves. Only Linnet knew
the things she cared most about; even when Linnet laughed at her, she
could feel the sympathetic twinkle in her eye and the sympathetic
undertone smothered in her laugh.
It was sunset, and she was watching it from the schoolroom window, the
clouds over the hill were brightening and brightening and a red glare
shone over the fields of snow. It was sunset and the schoolroom clock
pointed to a quarter of five. The schoolroom was chilly, for the fire had
died out half an hour since. Hollis Rheid had shoved big sticks into the
stove until it would hold no more and had opened the draft, whispering to
her as he passed her seat that he would keep her warm at any rate. But
now she was shivering, although she had wrapped herself in her coarse
green and red shawl, and tapped her feet on the bare floor to keep them
warm; she was hungry, too; the noon lunch had left her unsatisfied, for
she had given her cake to Rie Blauvelt in return for a splendid Northern
Spy, and had munched the apple and eaten her two sandwiches wishing all
the time for more. Leaving the work on her slate unfinished, she had
dived into the depths of her home-made satchel and discovered two crumbs
of molasses cake. That was an hour ago. School had closed at three
o'clock to-day because it was Friday and she had been nearly two hours
writing nervously on her slate or standing at the blackboard making
hurried figures. For the first time in her life Marjorie West had been
"kept in." And that "Lucy" book hidden in her desk was the cause of it;
she had taken it out for just one delicious moment, and the moment had
extended itself into an hour and a half, and the spelling lesson was
unlearned and the three hard examples in complex fractions unworked.
She had not been ignorant of what the penalty would be. Mr. Holmes had
announced it at the opening of school: "Each word in spelling that is
missed, must be written one hundred times, and every example not brought
in on the slate must be put on the blackboard after school."
She had smiled in self-confidence. Who ever knew Marjorie West to miss in
spelling? And had not her father looked over her examples last night and
pronounced them correct? But on her way to school the paper on which the
examples were solved had dropped out of her Geography, and she had been
wholly absorbed in the "Lucy" book during the time that she had expected
to study the test words in spelling. And the overwhelming result was
doing three examples on the board, after school, and writing seven
hundred words. Oh, how her back ached and how her wrist hurt her and how
her strained eyes smarted! Would she ever again forget _amateur, abyss,
accelerate, bagatelle, bronchitis, boudoir_ and _isosceles_?
Rie Blauvelt had written three words one hundred times, laughed at her,
and gone home; Josie Grey had written _isosceles_ one hundred times, and
then taken up a slate to help Marjorie; before Marjorie was aware Josie
had written _abyss_ seventy-five times, then suspecting something by the
demureness of Josie's eyes she had snatched her slate and erased the
pretty writing.
"You're real mean," pouted Josie; "he said he would take our word for it,
and you could have answered some way and got out of it."
Marjorie's reply was two flashing eyes.
"You needn't take my head off," laughed Josie; "now I'll go home and
leave you, and you may stay all night for all I care."
"I will, before I will deceive anybody," resented Marjorie stoutly.
Without another word Josie donned sack and hood and went out, leaving the
door ajar and the cold air to play about Marjorie's feet.
But five o'clock came and the work was done!
More than one or two tears fell slowly on the neat writing on Marjorie's
slate; the schoolroom was cold and she was shivering and hungry. It would
have been such a treat to read the last chapter in the "Lucy" book; she
might have curled her feet underneath her and drawn her shawl closer; but
it was so late, and what would they think at home? She was ashamed to go
home. Her father would look at her from under his eyebrows, and her
mother would exclaim, "Why, Marjorie!" She would rather that her father
would look at her from under his eyebrows, than that her mother would
say, "Why, _Marjorie!_" Her mother never scolded, and sometimes she
almost wished she would. It would be a relief if somebody would scold her
tonight; she would stick a pin into herself if it would do any good.
_Her_ photograph would not be in the group next time. She looked across
at the framed photograph on the wall; six girls in the group and herself
the youngest--the reward for perfect recitations and perfect deportment
for one year. Her father was so proud of it that he had ordered a copied
picture for himself, and, with a black walnut frame, it was hanging in
the sitting-room at home. The resentment against herself was tugging away
at her heart and drawing miserable lines on her brow and lips--on her
sweet brow and happy lips.
It was a bare, ugly country schoolroom, anyway, with the stained floor,
the windows with two broken panes, and the unpainted desks with
innumerable scars made by the boys' jack-knives, and Mr. Holmes was
unreasonable, anyway, to give her such a hard punishment, and she didn't
care if she had been kept in, anyway!
In that "anyway" she found vent for all her crossness. Sometimes she
said, "I don't care," but when she said, "I don't care, _anyway_!"
then everybody knew that Marjorie West was dreadful.
"I'm _through_," she thought triumphantly, "and I didn't cheat, and I
wasn't mean, and nobody has helped me."
Yes, somebody had helped her. She was sorry that she forgot to think that
God had helped her. Perhaps people always did get through! If they didn't
help themselves along by doing wrong and--God helped them. The sunshine
rippled over her face again and she counted the words on her slate for
the second time to assure herself that there could be no possible
mistake. Slowly she counted seven hundred, then with a sudden impulse
seized her pencil and wrote each of the seven words five times more to be
"_sure_ they were all right."
Josie Grey called her "horridly conscientious," and even Rie Blauvelt
wished that she would not think it wicked to "tell" in the class, and to
whisper about something else when they had permission to whisper about
the lessons.
By this time you have learned that my little Marjorie was strong and
sweet. I wish you might have seen her that afternoon as she crouched over
the wooden desk, snuggled down in the coarse, plaid shawl, her elbows
resting on the hard desk, her chin dropped in her two plump hands, with
her eyes fixed on the long, closely written columns of her large slate.
She was not sitting in her own seat, her seat was the back seat on the
girls' side, of course, but she was sitting midway on the boys' side, and
her slate was placed on the side of the double desk wherein H.R. was cut
in deep, ugly letters. She had fled to this seat as to a refuge, when she
found herself alone, with something of the same feeling, that once two or
three years ago when she was away from home and homesick she used to
kneel to say her prayers in the corner of the chamber where her valise
was; there was home about the valise and there was protection and safety
and a sort of helpfulness about this desk where her friend Hollis Rheid
had sat ever since she had come to school. This was her first winter at
school, her mother had taught her at home, but in family council this
winter it had been decided that Marjorie was "big" enough to go to
school.
The half mile home seemed a long way to walk alone, and the huge
Newfoundland at the farmhouse down the hill was not always chained; he
had sprung out at them this morning and the girls had huddled together
while Hollis and Frank Grey had driven him inside his own yard. Hollis
had thrown her an intelligent glance as he filed out with the boys, and
had telegraphed something back to her as he paused for one instant at the
door. Not quite understanding the telegraphic signal, she was waiting for
him, or for something. His lips had looked like: "Wait till I come." If
the people at home were not anxious about her she would have been willing
to wait until midnight; it would never occur to her that Hollis might
forget her.
Her cheeks flushed as she waited, and her eyes filled with tears; it was
a soft, warm, round face, with coaxing, kissable lips, a smooth, low brow
and the gentlest of hazel eyes: not a pretty face, excepting in its
lovely childishness and its hints of womanly graces; some of the girls
said she was homely. Marjorie thought herself that she was very homely;
but she had comforted herself with, "God made my face, and he likes it
this way." Some one says that God made the other features, but permits us
to make the mouth. Marjorie's sweetness certainly made her mouth. But
then she was born sweet. Josie Grey declared that she would rather see a
girl "get mad" than cry, as Marjorie did when the boys washed her face in
the snow.
Mr. Holmes had written to a friend that Marjorie West, his favorite among
the girls, was "almost too sweet." He said to himself that he feared she
"lacked character." Marjorie's quiet, observant father would have smiled
at that and said nothing. The teacher said that she did not know how to
take her own part. Marjorie had been eleven years in this grasping world
and had not learned that she had any "part" to take.
Since her pencil had ceased scribbling the room was so still that a tiny
mouse had been nibbling at the toe of her shoe. Just then as she raised
her head and pinned her shawl more securely the door opened and something
happened. The something happened in Marjorie's face. Hollis Rheid thought
the sunset had burst across it. She did not exclaim, "Oh, I am so glad!"
but the gladness was all in her eyes. If Marjorie had been more given to
exclamations her eyes would not have been so expressive. The closed lips
were a gain to the eyes and her friends missed nothing. The boy had
learned her eyes by heart. How stoutly he would have resisted if some one
had told him that years hence Marjorie's face would be a sealed volume to
him.
But she was making her eyes and mouth to-day and years hence she made
them, too. Perhaps he had something to do with it then as he certainly
had something to do with it now.
"I came back with my sled to take you home. I gave Sam my last ten cents
to do the night work for me. It was my turn, but he was willing enough.
Where's your hood, Mousie? Any books to take?"
"Yes, my Geography and 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 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 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.