pointment, she
"began about Jacob and read right on" until Mrs. Rheid's light step
touched the plank at the kitchen door. There was a quiet joyfulness in
her face, but she did not say one word; she bent over to kiss Marjorie as
she passed her, hung up her gingham sun-bonnet, and as the tea kettle was
singing, poured the boiling water into an iron pot, scattered a handful
of salt in it and went to the cupboard for the Indian meal.

"I'll stir," said Marjorie, looking around at the old lady and
discovering her head dropped towards one side and the knitting aslant in
her fingers.

"The pudding stick is on the shelf next to the tin porringer," explained
Mrs. Rheid.

Marjorie moved to the stove and stood a moment holding the wooden pudding
stick in her hand.

"You may tell Hollis," said Hollis' mother, slowly dropping the meal into
the boiling water, "that I have found peace, at last."

Majorie's eyes gave a quick leap.

"Peace in _believing_--there is no peace anywhere else," she added.

XII.

A BUDGET OF LETTERS.

"The flowers have with the swallows fled,
And silent is the cricket;
The red leaf rustles overhead,
The brown leaves fill the thicket

"With frost and storm comes slowly on
The year's long wintry night time."--_J. T. Trowbridge_

"_New York, Nov_. 21, 18--.

"MY DARLING MARJORIE:

"You know I hate to write letters, and I do not believe I should have
begun this this evening if Miss Prudence had not made me. She looks at
me with her eyes and then I am _made_. I am to be two weeks writing this,
so it is a journal. To think I have been at school two years and am
beginning a third year. And to think I am really nineteen years old. And
you are sixteen, aren't you? Almost as old as I was when I first came.
But your turn is coming, poor dear! Miss Prudence says I may go home and
be married next summer, if I can't find anything better to do, and Will
says I can't. And I shouldn't wonder if we go to Europe on our wedding
tour. That sounds grand, doesn't it? But it only means that Captain
Will Rheid will take his wife with him if the owners' do not object too
strongly, and if they do, the captain says he will let the _Linnet_ find
another master; but I don't believe he will, or that anybody will object.
That little cabin is just large enough for two of us to turn around in,
or we would take you. Just wait till Will has command of a big East
Indiaman and you shall go all around the world with