When Linnet came to her to kiss her good night, Miss Prudence looked down into her smiling eyes and quoted:
"'Keep happy, sweetheart, and grow wise.'"
The low murmur of voices reached Miss Prudence in her chamber long after midnight, she smiled as she thought of Giant Despair and his wife Diffidence. And then she prayed for the wanderer over the seas, that he might go to his Father, as the prodigal did, and that, if it were not wrong or selfish to wish it, she might hear from him once more before she died.
And then the voices were quiet and the whole house was still.
"Even trouble may be made a little sweet"--_Mrs. Platt._
"Here she is, grandmarm!" called out the Captain. "Run right in, Midget."
His wife was _marm_ and his mother _grandmarm_.
Marjorie ran in at the kitchen door and greeted the two occupants of the roomy kitchen. Captain Rheid had planned his house and was determined he said that the "women folks" should have room enough to move around in and be comfortable; he believed in having the "galley" as good a place to live in as the "cabin."
It was a handsome kitchen, with several windows, a fine stove, a well-arranged sink, a large cupboard, a long white pine table, three broad shelves displaying rows of shining tinware, a high mantel with three brass candlesticks at one end, and a small stone jar of fall flowers at the other, the yellow floor of narrow boards was glowing with its Saturday afternoon mopping, and the general air of freshness and cleanliness was as refreshing as the breath of the sea, or the odor of the fields.
"Deary me!" ejaculated grandma, "it's an age since you were here."
"A whole week," declared Marjorie, standing on tiptoe to hang up her sack and hat on a hook near the shelves.
"Nobody much comes in and it seems longer," complained the old lady.
"I think she's very good to come once a week," said Hollis' sad-faced mother.
"Oh, I like to come," said Marjorie, pushing one of the wooden-bottomed chairs to grandmother's side.
"It seems to me, things have happened to your house all of a sudden," said Mrs. Rheid, as she gave a final rub to the pump handle and hung up one of the tin washbasins over the sink.
"So it seems to us," replied Marjorie; "mother and I hardly feel at home yet. It seems so queer at the table with Linnet gone and two strangers--well, Mr. Holmes isn't a stranger, but he's a stranger at breakfast time."