She had written to Aunt Prue all about it that afternoon. She was tempted to show the letter to her mother, but was restrained by her usual shyness and timidity.
"Marjorie, why don't you talk?" questioned Linnet.
Marjorie was on the music stool, and had turned from them to play the air of one of the songs they used to sing in school.
"I thought I had been talking a great deal. I am thinking of so many things and I thought I had spoken of them all."
"I was thinking of Morris just then. But he was not in your school days, nor in Linnet's. He belongs to mine."
"And then I was thinking that his life was a success, as father's was. They both did the will of the Lord."
"I've been trying all day to submit to that will," said Linnet, in a thick voice.
"Is that all we have to do with it--submit to it?" asked Hollis with a grave smile. "Why do we always groan over 'Thy will be done,' as though there never was anything pleasant in it?"
"That's true," returned Linnet emphatically. "When Will came Saturday, I didn't rejoice and say 'It is the Lord's will,' but Sunday morning I thought it was, because it was so hard! All the lovely things that happen to us _are_ his will of course."
"Suppose we study up every time where the Lord speaks of his father's will, and learn what that will is. Shall we, Marjorie?" proposed Hollis.
"Oh, yes; it will be delightful!" she assented.
"And when I come back from my fishing excursion we will compare notes, and give each other our thoughts. I must give that topic in our prayer-meeting and take it in my Bible class."
"We know the will of God is our sanctification," said Marjorie slowly. "I don't want to sigh, 'Thy will be done,' about that."
"Hollis, I mean to hold on to that--every happy thing is God's will as well as the hard ones," said Linnet.
"And here come the mothers for some music," exclaimed Marjorie. "They cannot go to sleep without it."
And Marjorie's mother did not go to sleep with it. Hollis had invited himself to remain all night, saying that he was responsible for Linnet and could not go home unless she went home.
"Leave to Heaven the measure and the choice."--_Johnson_.
Marjorie fell asleep as happy as she wanted to be; but her mother did not close her eyes in sleep all that night. She closed them in prayer, however, and told Miss Prudence afterward that she "did not catch one wink of sleep." All night long she was asking the Lord if she might intermeddle between Marjorie and Hollis. As we look at them there was nothing to intermeddle with. Marjorie herself did not know of anything. Perhaps, more than anything, she laid before the Lord what she wanted him to do. She told him how Marjorie looked, and how depressed she had been, and her own fear that it was disappointment that was breaking her heart. The prayer was characteristic.