y occupants of the sitting-room during the long winter
evenings. Marjorie sighed for Linnet, or she would have sighed for her,
if she had been selfish; she remembered the evenings of studying with
Morris, and the master's tread as he walked up and down and talked to her
father.

Now she was alone in the dim light of two tallow candles. It was so cold
that the small wood stove did not sufficiently heat the room, and she
had wrapped the shawl about her that Linnet used to wear to school when
Mr. Holmes taught. She hid herself in it, gathering her feet up under
the skirt of her dress, in a position very comfortable and lazy, and very
undignified for a maiden who would be twenty-five on her next birthday.

The last letter from Hollis had stated that he was seeking a position in
the city. He thought he understood his business fairly, and the outlook
was not discouraging. He had a little money well invested; his life was
simple; and, beyond the having nothing to do, he was not anxious. He had
thought of farming as a last resort; but there was rather a wide
difference between tossing over laces and following the plow.

"Not that I dread hard work, but I do not love the _solitude_ of country
life. 'A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone,' Swift
writes; but I am not a wise man, nor a wild beast. I love men and the
homes of men, the business of men, the opportunities that I find among
men."

She had not replied to this letter; what a talk they would have over it!
She had learned Hollis; she knew him by heart; she could talk to him now
almost as easily as she could write. These years of writing had been a
great deal to both of them. They had educated each other.

The last time Mrs. West had seen Hollis she had wondered how she had ever
dared speak to him as she had spoken that morning in the kitchen. Had
she effected anything? She was not sure that they were engaged; she had
"talked it over" with his mother, and that mother was equally in the
dark.

"I know what his intentions are," confided Marjorie's mother "I know he
means to have her, for he told me so."

"He has never told me so," said Hollis' mother.

"You haven't asked him," suggested Mrs. West comfortably.

"Have _you_?"

"I made an opportunity for it to be easy for him to tell me."

"I don't know how to make opportunities," returned Mrs. Rheid with some
dignity.

"Everybody doesn't," was the complacent reply.

Marjorie had had a busy day arra