"
"Unless we can help each other," Marjorie answered. "But I don't believe
you need to be pulled apart, but only to be let alone to grow--that is,
if the germ is perfect."
"A perfect germ!" he repeated. Hollis liked to talk about himself to any
one who would help him to self-analysis.
But the slowly moving figures were approaching, the black figure with
bent shoulders and a slouched hat, the tall slight figure at his side in
light gray with a shawl of white wool across her shoulders and drawn up
over her hair, the fleecy whiteness softening the lines of a face that
were already softened.
"O, Prudence, how far ahead we are of those two," exclaimed the
school-master, "and they are wiser than we, perhaps, because they do not
know so much."
"They do not know so much of each other, surely," she replied with a low
laugh. That very day Mr. Holmes had quoted to her, giving it a personal
application: "What she suffered she shook off in the sunshine."
He had been arguing within himself all day whether or not to destroy that
letter in his pocket or to show it to her. Would it give her something
else to shake off in the sunshine?
Hollis was wondering if this Marjorie, with her sweet, bright face, her
graceful step and air of ladyhood, with modest and quick replies, not at
all intruding herself, but giving herself, unconsciously, could be the
same half-bashful little girl that he had walked with on a country road
four years before; the little girl who fell so far behind his ideal, the
little girl so different from city girls; and now, who among his small
circle of girlhood at home could surpass her? And she was dressed so
plainly, and there were marks of toil upon her fingers, and even freckles
hidden beneath the fresh bloom of her cheek! She would hunt eggs tomorrow
and milk the cows, she might not only weed in the garden, but when the
potatoes were dug she might pick them up, and even assist her father in
assorting them.
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