"Good-night, mother," she called back. "Are you waiting for anything?"
And then the mother went slowly and wonderingly up the stairs, muttering "Well! well! Of all things!"
Marjorie drew Aunt Prue's letter from her pocket to think it all over again by herself. Mr. Holmes was buried in manuscript. Prue was studying with her, beside studying French and German with the pastor's daughter in the village, and she herself was full of many things. They were coming home by and by to choose a home in America.
"When I was your age, Marjorie, and older, I used to fall asleep at night thinking over the doings of the day and finding my life in them; and in the morning when I awoke, my thought was, 'What shall I _do_ to-day?' And now when I awake--now, when my life is at its happiest and as full of doings as I can wish, I think, instead, of Christ, and find my joy in nearness to him, in doing all with his eye upon me. You have not come to this yet; but it is waiting for you. Your first thought to-morrow morning may be of some plan to go somewhere, of some one you expect to see, of something you have promised to-day; but, by and by, when you love him as you are praying to love him, your first thought will be that you are with him. You can imagine the mother awaking with joy at finding her child asleep beside her, or the wife awaking to another day with her husband; but blessed more than all is it to awake and find the Lord himself near enough for you to speak to."
Marjorie went to sleep with the thought in her heart, and awoke with it; and then she remembered that Hollis must be on his way to the train, and then that she and Linnet were to drive to Portland that day on a small shopping excursion and to find something for the birthday present of Morris' mother.
Several days afterward when the mail was brought in Mrs. West beckoned Marjorie aside in a mysterious manner and laid in her hand a letter from Hollis.
Mrs. West waited until Marjorie opened it, and felt in her pocket for her glasses. In the other time she had always read his letters. But Marjorie moved away with it, and only said afterward that there was no "news" in it.
It was not like the letters of the other time. He had learned to write as she had learned to talk. Her reply was as full of herself as it would have been to Morris. Hollis could never be a stranger again.