'"
"Oh," shivered Marjorie, "I don't like it. I like a Bible verse better."
"Isn't that in the Bible?" she asked, angrily.
"I don't believe it is."
"'Prepare to meet thy God' is."
"Yes," said Marjorie, "that was the text last Sunday."
"And on father's tombstone mother put this verse:
'O, my dear wife, do think of me
Although we've from each other parted,
O, do prepare to follow me
Where we shall love forever.'
"I wish I could remember some more."
"I wish you could," said Marjorie. "Didn't you have all the things we
have? You didn't have sewing machines."
"Sewing machines!" returned the old lady, indignantly, "we had our
fingers and pins and needles. But sometimes we couldn't have pins
and had to pin things together with thorns. How would you like that?"
"I'd rather be born now," said Marjorie. "I wouldn't want to have so many
step-mothers as you had, and I'd rather be named Marjorie than
_Experience_."
"Experience is a good name, and I'd have earned it by this time if my
mother hadn't given it to me," and the sunken lips puckered themselves
into a smile. "I could tell you some _dreadful_ things, too, but Hepsie
won't like it if I do. I'll tell you one, though. I don't like to think
about the dreadful things myself. I used to tell them to my boys and
they'd coax me to tell them again, about being murdered and such things.
A girl I knew found out after she was married that her husband had killed
a peddler, to steal his money to marry her with, and people found it out
and he was hanged and she was left a widow!"
"Oh, dear, _dear_," exclaimed Marjorie, "have dreadful things been always
happening? Did she die with a broken heart?"
"No, indeed, she was married afterward and had a good husband.
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