"
The pencil was moving again and the amused, attentive eyes were
steadfastly following.
"The persons inside the coach were Mr. Miller; a clergyman, his son; a
lawyer, Mr. Angelo; a foreigner, his lady, and a little child."
Marjorie uttered an exclamation; it was so funny!
"Now, Mr. Miller's son is a clergyman instead of himself, Mr. Angelo is a
lawyer, and nobody knows whether he is a foreigner or not, and we don't
know the foreigner's name, and he has a wife and child."
Miss Prudence smiled over the young eagerness, and rewrote the sentence
once again causing Mr. Angelo to cease to be a lawyer and giving the
foreigner a wife but no little child.
"O, Miss Prudence, you've made the little thing an orphan all alone in a
stage-coach all through the change of a comma to be a semi-colon!"
exclaimed Marjorie in comical earnestness. "I think punctuation means
ever so much; it isn't dry one bit," she added, enthusiastically.
"You couldn't enjoy Mrs. Browning very well without it," smiled Miss
Prudence.
"I never would know what the 'Cry of the Children' meant, or anything
about Cowper's grave, would I? And if I punctuated it myself, I might
not get all _she_ meant. I might make a meaning of my own, and that would
be sad."
"I think you do," said Miss Prudence; "when I read it to you and the
children, there were tears in your eyes, but the others said all they
liked was my voice."
"Yes," said Marjorie, "but if somebody had stumbled over every line I
shouldn't have felt it so.
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