"
"I don't like to have her troubled, because her heart hurts her when she
worries. Marjorie don't know that, but she told me. That's one reason--my
strongest reason--for being sorry about going to Boston."
"But your father is with her and he will watch over her."
"But she depends on _me_," pleaded Linnet.
"Marjorie is growing up," said Miss Prudence, hopefully.
"Marjorie! It doesn't seem to me that she will ever grow up; she is such
a little puss, always absent-minded, with a book in her hand. And she
can't mend or sew or even make cake or clear up a room neatly. We spoil
her, mother and I, as much as she spoils her kitten, Pusheen. Did you
know that _pusheen_ is Irish for puss? Mr. Holmes told us. I do believe
he knows everything."
"He comes nearer universal knowledge than the rest of us," said Miss
Prudence, smiling at the girl's eagerness.
"But he's a book himself, a small volume, in fine print, printed in a
language that none of us can read," said Linnet.
"To most people he is," granted Miss Prudence; "but when he was seven I
was ten, I was a backward child and he used to read to me, so he is not
a dead language to me."
Linnet pulled at the fringe of her white shawl; Will Rheid had brought
that shawl from Ireland a year ago.
"Miss Prudence, _do_ we have right desires, desires for things God likes,
while we are praying?"
"If we feel his presence, if we feel as near to him as Mary sitting at
the feet of Christ, if we thank him for his unbounded goodness, and ask
his forgiveness for our sins with a grateful, purified, and forgiving
heart, how can we desire anything selfish--for our own good only and not
to honor him, anything unholy, anything that it would hurt him to grant;
if our heart is ever one with his heart, our will ever one with his will,
is it not when we are nearest to him, nearest in obeying, or nearest in
praying? Isn't there some new impulse toward the things he loves to give
us every time we go near to him?"
Linnet assented with a slight movement of her head.
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