re they had
decided upon it they found themselves installed at Mrs. West's for the
summer. Before the first snow, however, a house was rented in New York
City, the old, homelike furniture removed to it, and they had but to
believe it to feel themselves at home in the long parlor in Maple Street.

Linnet was taken from her lonely home by loving force, and kept all
winter. She could be at rest with Miss Prudence; she could be at rest and
enjoy and be busy. It was wonderful how many things she became busied
about and deeply interested in. Her letters to Marjorie were as full of
life as in her school days. She was Linnet, Mrs. Holmes wrote to her
mother; but she was Linnet chastened and sanctified.

And all this time Hollis and Marjorie had written to each other, and had
seen each other for two weeks every day each year.

During the winter Linnet spent in New York the firm for which he
travelled became involved; the business was greatly decreased; changes
were made: one of the partners left the firm; the remaining head had a
nephew, whom he preferred to his partner's favorite, Hollis Rheid; and
Hollis Rheid found himself with nothing to do but to look around for
something to do.

"Come home," wrote his father. "I will build you a house, and give you
fifty acres of good land."

With the letter in his pocket, he sought his friends, the Holmes'. He was
not so averse to a farmer's life as he had been when he once spoke of it
to Marjorie.

He found Prue practicing; papa was in the study, she said, and mamma and
Linnet had gone to the train to meet Marjorie.

"Marjorie did not tell me that she was coming."

"It was to be your surprise, and now I've spoiled it."

"Nothing can spoil the pleasure of it," he returned.

Prue stationed herself at the window, as when she was a little girl, to
watch for Marjorie. She was still the blue bird with the golden crest.

XXIX.

ONE NIGHT.

"We are often prophets to others only because we are our own
historians."--_Madame Swetchine_.

The evening before Marjorie started for New York she was sitting alone in
her father's arm chair before the sitting-room fire. Her mother had left
her to go up to Mrs. Kemlo's chamber for her usual evening chat. Mrs.
Kemlo was not strong this winter, and on very cold days did not venture
down-stairs to the sitting-room. Marjorie, her mother, and the young
farmer who had charge of the farm, were often the only ones at the table,
and the onl