Now I wonder if you understand Marjorie well enough to understand all she
does and all she leaves undone during the coming fifteen or twenty years?




II.

EVANGELIST.

"The value of a thought cannot be told."--_Bailey_.


Her mother's broad, gingham back and the twist of iron gray hair low in
her neck greeted her as she opened the door, then the odor of hot
biscuits intruded itself, and then there came a shout from somebody
kneeling on the oilcloth near the stove and pushing sticks of dry wood
through its blazing open door.

"Oh, Marjie, what happened to you?"

"Something _didn't_ happen. I didn't have my spelling or my examples. I
read the "Lucy" book in school instead," she confessed dolefully.

"Why, _Marjie_!" was her mother's exclamation, but it brought the color
to Marjorie's face and suffused her eyes.

"We are to have company for tea," announced the figure kneeling on the
oilcloth as she banged the stove door. "A stranger; the evangelist Mr.