rgetic for the comfort of the sickroom, and
there was always so much to be attended to outside that quiet chamber.

"Marjorie knows her father's way," Mrs. West apologized to Mrs. Kemlo.
"He never has to tell her what he wants; but I have to make him explain.
There are born nurses, and I'm not one of them. I'll keep things running
outside, and that's for his comfort. He is as satisfied as though he were
about himself. If one of us must be down, he knows that he'd better be
the one."

During their last talk--how many talks Marjorie and her father had!--he
made one remark that she had not forgotten, and would never forget:--

"My life has been of little account, as the world goes; but I have sought
to do God's will, and that is success to a man on his death-bed."

Would not her life be a success, then? For what else did she desire but
the will of God.

The minister told Marjorie that there was no man in the church whose life
had had such a resistless influence as her father's.

The same hired man was retained; the farm work was done to Mrs. West's
satisfaction. The farm was her own as long as she lived; and then it was
to belong equally to the daughters. There were no debts.

The gentle, patient life was missed with sore hearts; but there was no
outward difference within doors or without. Marjorie took his seat at
table; Mrs. Kemlo sat in his armchair at the fireside; his wife read his
_Agriculturist_; and his daughter read his special devotional books. His
wife admitted to herself that Graham lacked force of character. She
herself was a _pusher_. She did not understand his favorite quotation:
"He that believeth shall not make haste."

Marjorie had her piano--this piano was a graduating present from Miss
Prudence; more books than she could read, from the libraries of Mr. and
Mrs. Holmes; her busy work in the household; an occasional visit to the
farmhouse on the sea shore, to read to the old people and sing to them,
and even to cut and string apples and laugh over her childish abhorrence
of the work. She never opened the door of the chamber they still called
"Miss Prudence's," without feeling that it held a history. How different
her life would have been but for Miss Prudence. And Linnet's. And
Morris's! And how many other lives, who knew? There were, beside, her
class in Sunday school; and her visits to Linnet, and exchanging visits
with the school-girls,--not with the girls at Master McCosh's; she had
made no in