ny words were spoken.

Deborah went out to the dining-room to change the table cloth for one of
the best damasks, saying to herself, "It's just as it ought to be! Just
as it ought to be! And things do happen so once in a while in this
crooked world."

XXV.

THE WILL OF GOD.

"To see in all things good and fair,
Thy love attested is my prayer."--_Alice Cary._

"Linnet is happy enough," said their mother; "but there's Marjorie!"

Yes; there was Marjorie! She was not happy enough. She was twenty-one
this summer, and not many events had stirred her uneventful life since we
left her the night of Miss Prudence's marriage. She came home the next
day bringing Mrs. Kemlo with her, and the same day she began to take the
old household steps. She had been away but a year, and had not fallen out
of the old ways as Linnet had in her three years of study; and she had
not come home to be married as Linnet had; she came home to do the next
thing, and the next thing had even been something for her father and
mother, or Morris' mother.

Annie Grey went immediately, upon the homecoming of the daughter of the
house, to Middlefield to learn dressmaking, boarding with Linnet and
"working her board." Linnet was lonely at night; she began to feel lonely
as dusk came on; and the arrangement of board for one and pleasant
companionship for the other, was satisfactory to both. Not that there was
very much for Annie to do, beside staying at home Monday mornings to help
with the washing, and ironing Monday evening or early Tuesday. Linnet
loved her housekeeping too well to let any other fingers intermeddle.
Will decided that she must stay, for company, especially through the
winter nights, if he had to pay her board.

Therefore Marjorie took the place that she left vacant in the farmhouse,
and more than filled it, but she did not love housekeeping for its own
comfortable sake, as Linnet did; she did it as "by God's law."

Her father's health failed signally this first summer. He was weakened by
several hemorrhages, and became nervous and unfitted even to superintend
the work of the "hired man." That general superintendence fell to Mrs.
West, and she took no little pride in the flourishing state of the few
acres. Now she could farm as she wanted to; Graham had not always
listened to her. The next summer he died. That was the summer Marjorie
was twenty. The chief business of the nursing fell to Marjorie; her
mother was rather too ene