ted himself
friend, brother, guardian, and sometimes, he told her, she treated him as
though he were her father, beside.

"It's good to have all in one," she once replied, "for I can have you all
with me at one time."

After being a year at Middlefield he had written to her about the
secluded homestead and fine salt bathing at the "Point," urging her to
spend her summer there. Marjorie had seen her face at church one day in
early spring as she had stopped over the Sabbath at the small hotel in
the town on her way on a journey farther north.

This afternoon, while Prudence had been under the apple-tree and in the
front entry, he had bent over the desk in his chamber, writing. This
chamber was a low, wide room, carpeted with matting, with neither shades
nor curtains at the many-paned windows, containing only furniture that
served a purpose--a washstand, with a small, gilt-framed glass hanging
over it, one rush-bottomed chair beside the chair at the desk, that
boasted arms and a leather cushion, a bureau, with two large brass rings
to open each drawer, and a narrow cot covered with a white counterpane
that his hostess had woven as a part of her wedding outfit before he was
born, and books! There were books everywhere--in the long pine chest, on
the high mantel, in the bookcase, under the bed, on the bureau, and on
the carpet wherever it was not absolutely necessary for him to tread.

Prudence and Marjorie had climbed the narrow stairway once this summer to
take a peep at his books, and Prudence had inquired if he intended
to take them all out West when he accepted the presidency of the college
that was waiting for him out there.

"I should have to come back to my den, I couldn't write anywhere else."

"And when somebody asks me if you are dead, as some king asked about the
author of Butler's 'Analogy' once, I'll reply, as somebody replied: 'Not
dead, but buried.'"

"That is what I want to be," he had replied. "Don't you want a copy of my
little pocket dictionary? It just fits the vest pocket, you see. You
don't know how proud I was when I saw a young man on the train take one
from his pocket one day!"

He opened his desk and handed her a copy; Marjorie looked at it and at
him in open-eyed wonder. And dared she recite to a teacher who had made a
book?

"When is your Speller coming out?"

"In the fall. I'm busy on my Reader now."

Prudence stepped to his desk and examined the sheets of upright
penmanship; it co