f."

The child's eyes were as full of tears as the woman's.

"Please tell me what to do," Marjorie entreated. "I don't want to lose
anything. I suppose it is as good to be a girl as a woman."

"Get all the sweetness out of every day; _live_ in to-day, don't plan or
hope about womanhood; God has all that in his safe hands. Read the kind
of books I have spoken of and when you read grown-up stories let some one
older and wiser choose them for you. By and by your taste will be so
formed and cultivated that you will choose only the best for yourself. I
hope the Bible will spoil some other books for you."

"I _devour_ everything I can borrow or find anywhere."

"You don't eat everything you can borrow or find anywhere. If you choose
for your body, how much more ought you to choose for your mind."

"I do get discontented sometimes and want things to happen as they do in
books; something happens in every chapter in a book," acknowledged
Marjorie.

"There's nothing said about the dull, uneventful days that come between;
if the author should write only about the dull days no one would read the
book."

"It wouldn't be like life, either," said Marjorie, quickly, "for
something does happen, sometimes nothing has happened yet to me, though.
But I suppose something will, some day."

"Then if I should write about your thirteen years the charm would have to
be all in the telling."

"Like Hector in the Garden," said Marjorie, brightly. "How I do love
that. And he was only nine years old."

"But how far we've gotten away from punctuation!"

Next to prayer children were Miss Prudence's most perfect rest. They were
so utterly unconscious of what she was going through. It seemed to Miss
Prudence as if she were always going through and never getting through.

"Are you fully satisfied that punctuation has its work in the world?"

"Yes, ever so fully. I should never get along in the Bible without it."

"That reminds me; run upstairs and bring me my Bible and I'll show you
something.

"And, then, after that will you show me the good of remembering _dates_.
They are so hard to remember. And I can't see the good. Do you suppose
you _could_ make it as interesting as punctuation?"

"I might try. The idea of a little girl who finds punctuation so
interesting having to resort to castle-building to make life worth
living," laughed Miss Prudence.

"Mother said to-day that she was afraid I was growing deaf, for she spoke
three times