Had she been
"spoiling" Linnet, too? But Linnet was two years older, almost old enough
to think about growing up.
"Marjorie, look at me!"
Marjorie raised her eyes and fixed them upon the glowing eyes that were
reading her own. Miss Prudence's lips were white and tremulous.
"I have had some very hard things in my life and I fully believe I
brought many of them upon myself. I spoiled my childhood and early
girlhood by light reading and castle-building; I preferred to live among
scenes of my own imagining, than in my own common life, and oh, the
things I left up done! The precious girlhood I lost and the hard
womanhood I made for myself."
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.
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