She is silent and she is talkative;
she is shy, very shy, and she is as bold as a little lion; sometimes she
won't tell you anything, and sometimes she tells you everything;
sometimes I think she doesn't love me, and again she loves me to death;
sometimes I think she isn't as bright as other girls, and then again I'm
sure she is a genius. Now Linnet is always the same; I always know what
she will do and say; but there's no telling about Marjorie. I don't know
what to make of her," she sighed.
"Then I wouldn't try, wife," said Marjorie's father, with his shrewd
smile. "I'd let somebody that knows."
After a while, Marjorie's mother spoke again:
"I don't know that you help me any."
"I don't know that I can; girls are mysteries--you were a mystery once
yourself. Marjorie can respond, but she will not respond, unless she has
some one to respond _to_, or some _thing_ to respond to. Towards myself I
never find but one Marjorie!"
"That means that you always give her something to respond to!"
"Well, yes, something like it," he returned in one of Marjorie's
contented tones.
"She'll have a good many heart aches before she's through, then," decided
Mrs. West, with some sharpness.
"Probably," said Marjorie's father with the shadow of a smile on his thin
lips.
III.
WHAT "DESULTORY" MEANS.
"A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded."
"Miss Prudence! O, Miss Prudence!"
It was summer time and Marjorie was almost fourteen years old.
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