"
"Kept in," he repeated, smoothing the little hand. "I'm sure it was not
for bad behavior and you look bright enough to learn your lessons."
"I didn't know my lessons," she faltered.
"Then you should have done as Stephen Grellet did," he returned,
releasing her hand.
"How did he do?" she asked.
Nobody loved stories better than Marjorie.
Pushing her mother's spring rocker nearer the fire, she sat down,
arranged the skirt of her dress, and, prepared herself, not to
"entertain" him, but to listen.
"Did you never read about him?"
"I never even heard of him."
"Then I'll tell you something about him. His father was an intimate
friend and counsellor of Louis XVI. Stephen was a French boy. Do you
know who Louis XVI was?"
"No, sir."
"Do you know the French for Stephen?"
"No, sir."
"Then you don't study French. I'd study everything if I were you. My wife
has read the Hebrew Bible through. She is a scholar as well as a good
housewife. It needn't hinder, you see."
"No, sir," repeated Marjorie.
"When little Etienne--that's French for Stephen--was five or six years
old he had a long Latin exercise to learn, and he was quite
disheartened."
Marjorie's eyes opened wide in wonder. Six years old and a long Latin
exercise. Even Hollis had not studied Latin.
"Sitting alone, all by himself, to study, he looked out of the window
abroad upon nature in all her glorious beauty, and remembered that God
made the gardens, the fields and the sky, and the thought came to him:
'Cannot the same God give me memory, also?' Then he knelt at the foot of
his bed and poured out his soul in prayer.
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