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"I Wish I Were Dead!" cried Elsie.--Page 200.

MEG'S FRIEND.

A STORY FOR GIRLS.

By ALICE CORKRAN,

Author of "Margery Merton's Girlhood," "Down the Snow Stairs," "Joan's Adventures," etc., etc.

WITH FIVE FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROBERT FOWLER.

NEW YORK:

A. L. BURT, PUBLISHER.

MEG'S FRIEND.

CHAPTER I.

MEG.

It was a queer old house in Bloomsbury, that had been fashionable some two hundred years ago, and had fallen into abject neglect. The hall door was dim for want of paint, and weatherbeaten to a dirty gray; the lower windows were tawdry with vulgar blinds and curtains, and enlivened with green boxes full of a few pining flowers. The drawing-room windows showed a sort of mildewed finery, and then, in melancholy degrees, poverty claimed the upper stories. It had all the features and cast of a London lodging house.

Within, the house carried out the same suggestion of past grandeur and present decay. The hall was wide, dingy, and unfurnished; the staircase of oak was impressive, stained, and dusty.

On the topmost step of the top flight might habitually be seen, toward sunset, a child seated and watching, with head thrust through the banisters. She would sit still until there came the scrape of a latchkey turning in the lock, and the sound of footsteps in the hall. Then the mute little figure would grow full of sudden life; the little feet would run down faster than eye could mark. Arrived in the hall, the child would stop with sudden dignity before a man, robust and tall, and looking up, ever so high, into a bright, young, manly face smiling down upon her, she would lift her tiny forefinger, and some such colloquy would ensue:

"You are late; where have you been, Mr. Standish?"

"At work, Meg—at work all the time."

"You have not been to the parlor of the Dragon?"

"No, Meg; not set my foot inside it."

"You have not been with those horrid whisky-smelling men?"

"Not seen one of them, Meg."

"Then you may come up," the child would say, taking his hand and leading him up.

Mr. William Standish was beginning life as a journalist. He contributed descriptive articles to a London paper, and was correspondent to a colonial journal. His straight-featured countenance expressed energy and decision; his glance betokened a faculty of humorous and rapid observation; closely cropped blond hair covered his shapely head.

The journalist occupied the rooms on the upper story of Mrs. Browne's lodging-house. He was the single member of the nomadic population sheltering under that decaying roof who lived among his household gods. He had made it a stipulation, on taking the rooms, that he should have them unfurnished, and he had banished every trace of the landlady's belongings.

The child was Meg. She went by no other name. When Mrs. Browne answered her lodgers' queries concerning her, she replied vaguely that the child had been left in her charge. Meg went to an over-crowded school in the morning, and did odd jobs of household work in the afternoon. In the intervals she sat on the topmost stair, watching the social eddies of the shabby miniature world breaking down below. She was a silent child, with a mop of dark brown hair and gray eyes, the gaze of which was so sustained as not to be always pleasant to meet. The gravity of her look was apt to make those upon whom it was directed feel foolish. She repelled the patronizing advances of lodgers, and, when compelled to answer, chilled conversation by the appalling straightforwardness of her monosyllabic replies.

Two events had influenced her childhood. One day, when she was about seven years of age, she had suddenly asked the old servant, who from time immemorial had been the sole assistant of Mrs. Browne in discharging her duties toward her lodgers:

"Tilly, had you a mammy?"

"Lor' bless the child!" answered Tilly, almost losing hold of the plate she was washing. "Of course I had."

"Has every child got a mammy?" persisted Meg, with deliberate plainness of speech.

"Of course they have," answered the old woman, utterly bewildered.

"Is madam my mammy?" asked the child, a slight tremor perceptible in the slower and deeper intonation of her voice.

"Madam" was the name by which she had been taught to call Mrs. Browne.

"No!" answered Tilly sharply; "and if you ask any more questions ye'll be put into the dark closet."

The threat, that brought to the child's mind associations of terror, wrought the desired effect of silence. She stood, with her glance unflinchingly directed on Tilly's face, and with a question trembling on her lips, until the old servant turned away and left the kitchen.

Hitherto Meg had never asked a question concerning herself. She had accepted a childhood without kissings and pettings—a snubbed, ignored childhood—with a child's sainted powers of patience and resignation.

That night, as the old woman was composing herself to sleep in the attic that she shared with the child, she was startled by Meg's voice sounding close to her ear, and, turning, she saw the diminutive figure standing near her bed in the moonlight.

"Tilly," she said, "I don't mind your locking me up in the dark closet, if you'll just tell me—is my mammy dead?"

"Yes," said Tilly, taken off her guard.

There was a moment's pause, and an audible sigh.

"I'll never be naughty again, Tilly—never," resumed the child's voice, "if you'll just tell me—what was she like?"

"You'll not ask another question if I tell ye?" replied Tilly after a moment of silent self-debate.

"No, Tilly."

"Never another? Do ye hear?"

"Never, Tilly," repeated the child solemnly.

"And you'll never let madam know as I told you?" said Tilly excitedly, sitting up in her bed.

"Never."

"Then, I don't mind saying, for I thinks as you ought to know, as she was as pretty as a picture as I ever saw, and the gentlest, sweetest, ladiest lady," said Tilly, nodding, as a sharp sob sounded in her throat.

"Lady?" said Meg.

"A lady she was in all her ways, every bit of her; and the man as let her die here all alone was a brute—that he was!" said Tilly, with vehemence.

"What man?" asked the child, in a low voice.

"Go to bed," said Tilly severely, through her sobs.

"Was it my pappy?" said the child, who had seen and heard strange things during her seven-years' life.

"Go to bed," repeated Tilly. "You promised as you'd never ask another question."

"I will not, Tilly," said Meg, turning away, and returning through the moonlight to bed.

The child kept her word, and never alluded to the subject again to Tilly.

A few days later, when she was helping the old servant to tidy the rooms after the departure of some lodgers from the drawing-room floor, Tilly was surprised by the eagerness with which she craved permission to keep a crumpled fashion-plate that she had found among the litter. It represented a simpering young woman in a white ball dress, decked with roses. Permission having been granted her to appropriate the work of art, Meg carried it up to her attic, and hid it away in a box. Had any one cared to observe the child, it would have been remarked that she, who kissed nobody, lavished kisses upon this meaningless creation of a dressmakers' brain; gazed at it, murmured to it, hid it away, and slept with it under her pillow.

The next great event marking Meg's childhood had been the arrival of Mr. William Standish to the lodging-house. It had occurred nearly two years after the talk with Tilly concerning her mother. Meanwhile the old servant had died.

Meg had watched with interest the arrival of the new lodger's properties; and she had listened, fascinated, to his lusty voice, singing to the accompaniment of hammering, and rising above the flurry of settling down.

On the third evening Mr. Standish, who had observed the little figure cowering in the dusk, and had once or twice given to it a friendly nod, invited her to enter. Meg held back a moment, then shyly walked in.

She had a general impression of books and writing materials, pipes, and prints on all sides, and of an atmosphere impregnated with the perfume of tobacco.

After another pause of smileless hesitation, she took the footstool her host drew for her by the fire. At his invitation she told him her name, and gave a succinct account of her general mode of life. She admitted, with monosyllabic brevity, that she liked to hear him sing, and that it would please her if he would sing for her now. She sat entranced and forgetful of her surroundings as he warbled:

"Nellie was a lady—
Last night she died,"

and followed the negro ballad with a spirited rendering of the "Erl King."

At his invitation she renewed her visits. She was tremendously impressed when he told her that he wrote for the papers; and was dumb with amazement when he showed her, in a newspaper, the printed columns of which he was the author.

They had been acquainted about a week, when Meg broke the silence set upon her lips, and spoke to her new friend as she had never spoken to human being before.

Mr. Standish had recited for her the ballad of the ghostly mother who nightly comes to visit the children she has left on earth, and till cock-crow rocks the cradle of her sleeping baby. The young man was astonished at the expression of the child. Her cheeks were pale; she breathed hard; her round opened eyes were fixed upon him.

"I wish mother would come just like that to me," she said abruptly.

"Your mother—is she dead?" he asked gently.

She nodded. "She's dead. I never saw her—never. I'd love to see her just a-coming and standing by my bed. I'd not be a bit frightened."

"But if you have never seen her you would not know she was your mother," he replied, impressed by the passionate assertion of her manner.

"Oh, I'd know her! I'd know her!" said the child, with vivid assurance. "Soon as she'd come in I'd know her. She was a lady."

"A lady!" he repeated. "How do you know? What do you mean?"

"Tilly told me. Tilly's dead," answered Meg with ardor. "She told it to me once before; and I went to see her at the hospital, and she said it again. She said, 'Meg, your mother was a lady—the sweetest, prettiest, ladiest lady'—that's what she said; 'and, Meg, be good for her sake.'" She paused, her eyes continuing to hold his with excited conviction. "That's how I know she was a lady," Meg resumed; "and I know what a lady is. The Misses Grantums down there"—infusing scorn into her voice as she pointed to the floor to indicate she meant lodgers who lived below—"they're not ladies though they've fine dresses; but they have loud voices, and they scold. I go to the corners of the streets. I watch the carriages. I see the ladies in them; and when I see one gentle and a-smiling like an angel, I say mother was like one of these. That's how I'd know what she'd be like. And," she added more slowly, lowering her voice to a confidential whisper and advancing a step, "I have a picture of her. Would you like to see it?"

"I would," he answered, thinking that at last he was approaching a clew to the mystery.

She dashed off, and in a moment returned with something carefully wrapped up in tissue paper, and gently drew out a limp picture, that she held out at arm's length before the young man, keeping it out of his reach.

"There, I'm sure she'd be like that—all smiling, you see. And those beautiful curls, are they not lovely? and those large eyes and those roses? I'm sure she'd be just like that."

"But let me hold it—just with my finger tips," he pleaded, as the child jealously held the print away from him.

She slowly relinquished it to him and stood at his elbow.

"That's a picture taken out of a book—not a portrait," he said.

"I picked it up. Some lodgers had gone away. I found it in a corner. Isn't it lovely? I'm sure she'd be just like that," reiterated Meg.

Mr. Standish was silent a moment. He was moved, yet he felt impelled to speak words of wisdom to the child. Mooning about corners of streets watching ladies drive past, and nursing those queer, foolish, ambitious ideas about her mother was not likely to lead to any good. He thought the whole story was probably without a grain of truth, the absurd fabrication of some old woman's brain, and likely to prove hurtful to Meg in giving her false notions concerning her duties in life.

He paused, revolving his words, anxious not to hurt, yet deeming it incumbent upon him to expel this foolish fancy.

"My dear child," he said at last, "why do you imagine your mother was like that picture, or like one of those ladies in the carriages? For all you know they may be lazy, vain, and selfish. It is not the pretty dress that makes the lady, or the face either. Is it not far better and more reasonable to think of that dear mother, whom you never saw, as one of God's own ladies? These ladies are found in all sorts of conditions, sometimes in caps and aprons, sometimes in beautiful bonnets, very often with brave, rough hands. What is wanted to make a lady is a kind, honest heart."

"No, that's not being a lady," interrupted the child, with a flash and a toss of her head. She spoke with decision; but her voice faltered as if she had received a shock. Taking the picture from the young man's hand, she began carefully, and with a trembling elaborateness, to replace it in its coverings. "Jessie's good, and so was Tilly. They work hard, and scrub, and run about on errands. They're not ladies. A lady's quite different," continued Meg, suddenly facing him and speaking with vehemence and clearness. "She's rich, and never scolds or cheats. She does not work at all—not a bit; people work for her and drive her about, but she does nothing herself. She has never dirty hands, or her cap all untidy, or looking all in a fuss. She does nothing but smile and look beautiful, like an angel," concluded Meg triumphantly, reiterating her favorite simile.

"Meg," said the young fellow, seeing more clearly the necessity to root out this absurd ideal from the child's mind, "you are talking very foolishly. A lady is, indeed, not necessarily an angel. You say a lady must be rich. Now, if your mother was rich, why are you poor? Would she not have left you her money in dying, and you would have been rich like her?"

"I don't know anything about that," said the child, growing a little pale, and beginning once more to fidget with the fashion-plate.

"It is for your good, Meg, that I speak," resumed the young man. "You must wish to be like your mother; and you cannot grow up good and hard-working and honest if you think your mother was rich and left you poor, with no one to look after you or care for you."

"It was not her fault," said the child faintly.

"It would have been her fault," he answered severely, shaking his head. "My dear Meg, put away this foolish idea. Call up your mother to your mind as a good, toiling woman; one of God's ladies, as I called her before. Try to be like her. Lay aside the thought that she was one of those carriage ladies."

"I won't!" interrupted the child, standing pale and upright, clutching the fashion-plate close up against her chest. "It's a lie! She was a lady!"

A smothered exclamation rose to Mr. Standish's lips. It was the first offensive word he had heard the child use.

"Meg," he cried, following the fluttering little figure up the stairs.

He saw her enter an attic; he heard the door slam and the bolt drawn.

"Meg," he called again gently.

There came no answer; but Mr. Standish thought he heard the sound of passionate sobbing. He waited, called a third time, and receiving no response he shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

The exigencies of the press absorbed Mr. Standish so completely that for the next few days he had no time to think of Meg. He noticed that the corner on the top lobby was empty, and a vague feeling of regret crossed his mind.

On the third day he was disturbed by a great clatter in the kitchen and the noise of many voices, above which that of Meg rose shrill and angry. Jessie, the hard-worked slavey of the establishment, admitted when she came up with the coal-scuttle, in answer to Mr. Standish's inquiries concerning the cause of the trouble, that it was Meg's fault. She was not like the same child. She was like beside herself—she was—these last three days.

Mr. Standish was perplexed, and resolved, after completing the weekly budget he was writing for the Melbourne Banner, to seek out the child, and get the clew to this sudden demoralization.

He was confirmed in this resolution when, in returning from the post, he came upon Meg in fierce encounter with some boys. She was fighting valiantly, but numbers proved too much. Mr. Standish stepped up to the rescue. He caught one boy by the ear, rolled another in the dust, and generally dispersed the assailants on all sides. Meg waited, watching, on the outskirts of the fray; but as soon as Mr. Standish had disposed of her enemies she turned and fled, disheveled, homeward. The account her rescuer received left little doubt on his mind that Meg had been the aggressive party.

Mr. Standish sought Mrs. Browne. The landlady was lachrymose and muddled. To his inquiries concerning the queer notion Meg had concerning her mother, she gave a rambling account of a mysterious lady who had come to the lodgings accompanied by an older lady. Meg had been born here, and the mother had died in giving her birth. No father had ever come to visit the mother or child.

Mrs. Browne admitted that some money was sent regular through a lawyer—just enough to pay for Meg's clothing and schooling; but who the lawyer was, Mrs. Browne refused to tell.

Mr. Standish left Mrs. Browne drying her eyes, and went up, meditating how to address Meg. There had come to him an indistinct realization of what the thought of a lady-mother had been to the child in her sordid surroundings. After a few moments' deliberation he took out pen, ink, and paper, and wrote in Roman characters:

"Dear Meg: I write to ask you to forgive me. You were right, and I was wrong. Your mother was a lady, just as you thought she was. I have heard all about her. Won't you forgive me, and come and see me? I feel lonely without my little friend.

"W. S."

Having folded the letter, he slipped it under the child's door; then he returned to his room and waited, leaving his own door ajar. After awhile he began to sing some of Meg's favorite melodies—"Sally in the Alley" and "Margery Allen." He thought he heard a furtive step. He turned his head away, so as not to frighten by so much as a glance the shy advance, and began softly to sing Meg's favorite ballad:

"Nellie was a lady—
Last night she died."

He fancied he distinguished the reluctant drawing near of tardy feet. When the song was ended he looked round. Meg was on the threshold. A glance revealed the change those four days had wrought. Her hair was unkempt, her dress untidy, her cheeks pale; but it was not so much those signs of neglect, the pallor of her cheeks, the drawn lines about her mouth that startled him, as a certain expression of childish recklessness. It was the Meg he had seen wrangling with boys in the street, flying past him lawless and fierce. In her hand she held his letter, and she kept her eyes fixed upon him with a bold stare.

"Is it true what you have written here, or is it a pack of stories?" she asked abruptly.

"It is all true, Meg," said Mr. Standish gently. "She was a lady."

"A real lady, like those that drive about in the carriages?" asked the child with stern cross-examination.

"She was a real lady, Meg; just as you have always pictured her—with soft hands that had never done rough work, and a gentle voice. All about her was beautiful," replied Mr. Standish in slow and convinced tones.

At this assurance Meg gave a little sigh; the tension about her lips relaxed; the fierce brilliancy of her interrogative glance was subdued.

"How do you know?" she asked more softly.

"Mrs. Browne told me. I will take you to her, and she will tell it to you."

"I don't want her to tell me, you tell me," said Meg quickly.

Mr. Standish hesitated; under the child's innocent gaze he found it difficult to speak. He told her in simple words some of the story Mrs. Browne had related. It was a mercy Meg evinced no curiosity concerning her father. Mr. Standish dwelt upon the beauty, the youth, the suffering of the mother; he spoke of the love she had lavished in anticipation upon the babe she was never to see.

As he spoke, the thought of that early and lonely death thrust itself before him with a new and piteous force. The thought of the forsaken child moved him, and his voice faltered.

Meg was by his side in a moment; her hand touched his. "You asked me in your letter to forgive you," she whispered. "I forgive you."

He took the little hand. "You must forget also, Meg, that I said your mother had left you poor and uncared for."

"But she did. She left me poor, and with strangers; that's what you said," replied Meg, with a return of the old fierceness, quoting his words.

"She died," he answered with emphasis, bending forward. "Listen, Meg," he continued, as the child remained apparently unsoftened, "will you believe me, even if you do not understand me—will you believe me?"

For a moment Meg remained dogged and silent, then, as she met his troubled glance, the doubt passed from hers, the confiding light came back.

"I believe you; I believe you very much," she said.

"Then, when you think of her, Meg, think that some one had done her great injury—had made her suffer, more than you can know. That is why she came here and died. She left you poor because everything had been taken from her."

He paused a moment. Meg was pale, and seemed a little dazed; but the excitement had left her manner.

"Everything," he repeated with emphasis.

The child's bosom heaved.

"Now that she is dead," resumed the young man, "I believe that dear mother watches over her little daughter."

"You believe it," said Meg slowly.

"I believe it," said Mr. Standish. "But, come; where is that picture? Let me look at it again."

Meg was off and back again in a moment. The print was torn and besmeared, as if it had gone through rough usage since he had seen it last.

"Halloo! it is falling to bits. It was not so crumpled and torn the other day," he remarked.

"No," Meg confessed; "I hated it the other night, when you said mother was hard-working, like a charwoman. I wanted to tear it up—I did; but I could not." She stopped; for the first time there came a choking in her throat, and a sob, quickly repressed.

Mr. Standish pretended absorption in his occupation, spread out the tattered print, and announced his intention of bestowing to the painting a new lease of life by pasting it upon a pasteboard back. He gathered the necessary implements for the task. Meg, usually so active, watched in silence; but he knew, by the trembling of the little hand resting on the table, by the stiff uprightness of the small figure beside him, the fierce battle the child was waging with herself to suppress all show of emotion.

He took no apparent heed of her, but proceeded with the task of renovation. Perhaps he had intended still to lead the child's mind to a truer conception of a lady than she could get from worship of this simpering fetish, with a mouth like a cherry, and curled eyelashes; but as he handled the old fashion-plate, the pathos of its smeared and battered condition touched him with a sense of sacredness, and he found himself declaring that her mother might have been like that picture. There was no doubt about it; it represented a lovely creature, and her mother was a lovely lady.

When the task was completed he was rewarded by the sight of Meg's radiant countenance. In perfect peace she carried off the restored picture.

CHAPTER II.

TWO YEARS LATER.

Two years had elapsed, and to superficial observers Meg might have appeared to have changed only by some inches added to her length of limb. She still haunted the corner overlooking the stairs on the topmost lobby, but it was not to watch the come and go of the shabby social eddies breaking down below. She read much to herself. Her choice of literature was a queer mélange of odds and ends. She was up to all the fires, the accidents, the pageants of a world into which she had never set foot. She knew to what corner of a London daily paper and provincial weekly she was to look to find descriptions of these sensational incidents, and the style in which they were recorded stirred in her an admiration worthy of being lavished on Homeric epics. She knew also a number of ballads by heart that she would recite with an amount of native dramatic vividness.

If the shifting scenes going on downstairs no longer attracted her as in the past, she was intent and absorbed in watching one life. The friendship between her and Mr. Standish had become a tie that drew out peculiarities of the child's nature. There had been quarrels, coolnesses, reconciliations, but Meg's usual attitude toward the journalist was one of mingled proprietorship and watchfulness. It was a mixture of motherly solicitude and dog-like faithfulness. She cross-questioned, admonished, and kept vigilant guard over his interests.

Once, having discovered that Mrs. Browne had cheated him of sixpence in the weekly bill, she drew the landlady's notice to the overcharge; but Mrs. Browne refused to acknowledge or set it right, and Meg cried herself to sleep. Loyalty to the landlady was discarded, and with brimming eyes and quivering lips she told Mr. Standish next day of that fraudulent sixpence. To her dismay he laughed, and vowed that Mrs. Browne's name ought to be handed down to posterity as an honest landlady if sixpence covered the amount of a week's cheating. Meg would not be comforted; to her the landlady seemed remorseless.

A mother could not have detected with quicker apprehension a shade of weariness or pallor on the young man's face. Her invariable question on such an occasion would be, "What have you had for dinner?" Sometimes he tried to deceive her. He would roll out a dazzling menu—turtle soup, turbot, plum-pudding.

She would stop him at once with pathetic and angry remonstrance. "It is not true; you know it is not true. Why do you say it?"

Her earnestness always moved him; he was ashamed of deceiving her.

Their last quarrel had been caused by Mr. Standish's confession that he had dined off fish.

"Fish!" cried Meg with scorn, tossing her head. "Can you work after a bit of fish? What fish—turbot, salmon, fried soles?" The ladies who occupied the drawing-room floor gave occasional dinner-parties, where such delicacies figured.

As Mr. Standish kept shaking his head, the smile in his eyes growing more amused and tender, a terrible idea dawned upon Meg. She grew pale.

"Herring!" she faltered.

"Herrings," he repeated in a voice of rich appreciation. "Two herrings, fat as lord mayors!"

Meg walked about the room, her eyes bright with angry misery, her lips trembling. "It's downright wicked! You want to kill yourself, that's what you want to do." She flicked a tear away. "A workman in the street down there has a better dinner than that."

"Now, Meg, be reasonable," the young man pleaded in a voice of protest. "Don't you see," he went on, striking his left palm with two fingers of the right hand, "there is a day called 'pay-day' that rules my bill of fare, as I explained to you the other day the moon rules the tides. On pay-day and its immediate followers I live in abundance. Then come days of lesser luxuries, then abstinence. I have reached this period. Soon plenty will reign again."

"It is a foolish way of managing money," said Meg, abrupt in her trouble, and only half-comforted.

"Can you tell me, Meg, how to manage money without reference to pay-day?" he asked.

"Will you do as I tell you?" she said, stopping short in her restless peregrinations.

He nodded.

"Take your money, all your money, and divide it into little parcels, as many parcels as there are days it must last, and every day spend just what is inside one of the little parcels, and not a bit more," said Meg with elucidating gestures.

Mr. Standish vowed she spoke like a chancellor of the exchequer; that the more he heard her the more he was determined on coming into the colossal fortune he was to enjoy some day, to appoint her his almoner, housekeeper, the dispenser of his bounties, the orderer of his dinners. This project to be his housekeeper was one dear to Meg's heart, the pacifier of her wrath. By what means Mr. Standish was to come into possession of this fabulous wealth remained vague. Sometimes he would announce his intention of getting it by marrying an heiress, a project always chillingly received by Meg. Sometimes she would suggest spitefully that the heiress would not marry him; but Mr. Standish overrode all objections, and would depict days of indolent delight for himself and his bride, while Meg managed the household. When the daydream reached this point it generally abruptly terminated by Meg plunging out of the room, and banging the door after her with an emphatic "Shan't!"

On the evening of the fish dinner Mr. Standish left the heiress out of the question, and Meg was softened.

The next day the young man supped at home. His tray, as usual on these occasions, was brought in by Meg. A burly German sausage and a pot of Scotch marmalade graced the board. Meg's answers were evasive concerning the source from which these dainties came. It struck Mr. Standish that Meg had bought them with the store of half-pence he had taught her to put away in a moneybox he had himself presented to her, with a view to inculcating economical instincts. Her fierce refusal to answer convinced him that he had guessed right.

The refusal to touch these dainties died on his lips. He could not hurt the child. He ate the supper she had provided with loud laudations of its excellence. Before it was finished an arrangement had been entered into between them. On pay-day Meg would henceforth receive a sum to be kept for him against the days of privation. The contract had been fulfilled. Meg had proved a stern treasurer, resisting the young man's entreaties to dole out portions of the money before the appointed time.

If the child had gained much by intercourse with an educated mind, if her English had grown by it more refined and correct, her mind stored with more definite and varied knowledge; if, above all, there had come to her by this affection a precocious womanliness, taming and sweetening her lonely life, Mr. Standish had gained as much by the tie between them. A sort of wonder, half-amused, half-tender, sometimes awoke in his heart at the thought of the child's devotion. His occupation led him to see rough sides of life, and as he became familiar with degradation, the goodness, the innocence of the child was ever before him. He felt it was touching to be loved by a child of ten. Her advanced wisdom struck him. If it stirred his sense of humor and inclined him to laugh, still it made him thoughtful.

During those two years he had enlarged his connections. He was earning more money. Individuals, somewhat of unkempt appearance, whom Meg disapproved of thoroughly, often made their way up the stairs to the young man's rooms. The peals of laughter, the loud talk emerging from the sanctum, confirmed Meg in judging these visitors foolish company for her hero. The child grew hot with angry apprehension when the bell rang shortly after their coming, and Jessie would answer it with tumblers of whisky and lemons. On letting out these friends Meg thought that Mr. Standish usually looked excited, his eyes brighter, his manner more expansive. The child grew restless, alert, suspicious. She did not disguise her feelings to Mr. Standish. Why did these rough men come drinking his whisky? She would break into fierce denunciations against drink.

"Madam"—Mrs. Browne—"always said she was poor. Why was she poor? Because she was always a-sipping and drinking. He'd keep being poor too."

Often Meg's tones, staccato with prophetic denunciation, would falter at the picture she evoked.

Mr. Standish listened sometimes with an amused and indulgent good humor that exasperated Meg; sometimes an uneasy qualm was perceptible in his voice as he admitted that Meg was wise; sometimes he assumed a superior tone of disapproval that silenced her for the time, but left her more than ever under the shadow of a vague and sorrowful apprehension.

One Sunday afternoon Mr. Standish emerged from his room ready to sally forth. Meg appeared out of her shadowy corner.

"Going out?" she asked shortly.

He nodded, smiling down with benign amusement. He seemed enveloped in a holiday brightness.

"Going with those horrid men?" she resumed, throwing her words out with sorrowful brevity.

He nodded, and drew out his watch. He was apparently in a mood to be entertained.

"Come, Meg, there are five minutes for a sermon. I will listen to it respectfully, as if it were the Archbishop of Canterbury preaching."

But Meg was too much absorbed to mind a joke. She followed him into his sitting-room, and began restlessly walking about.

Mr. Standish sat down, and as he stroked his hat with his sleeve he watched the little figure's perambulations. Meg wore her Sunday gown, a rusty black velveteen, foldless and clinging, buttoned from throat to hem. She had outgrown its scanty proportions. Her feet, incased in black felt slippers, looked large under the trim ankles.

"Well, Meg, I am waiting," said Mr. Standish.

"Don't go," said the child, stopping short and facing him abruptly. The quaint austerity of the skimpy garment brought out the lines of the childish figure as she stood erect and animated before him.

"Why not, Meg?"

"Because they're bad; because I hate them; because they'll bring you to misery," said the child, with an upward flash of one little brown well-formed hand, and with a piteous emphasis on the last word.

"Nonsense, Meg!" said Mr. Standish, impatient because more impressed than he cared to be. "You keep comparing my friends with Mrs. Browne—I don't mean any disrespect—an uneducated tippling old woman. My friends, my dear Meg, are gentlemen, educated men, who, I admit, are fond of a joke, fond of a glass or two glasses of grog, but who respect themselves."

"Education has nothing to do with it," snapped Meg, with concise energy. "There was a man downstairs, he was educated. I think he was the devil. He'd leave his wife and little child for days, and come back drunk." Meg gave a fierce little shudder. "There'd be scenes. One day he went and never came back—never, and the wife and baby boy went off one snowy day to the workhouse."

"Poor child, you should not see those things!" said Mr. Standish with a troubled look.

"Why not? You would not let these men up there take your money if you saw them."

There was a grotesque sweetness in Meg's appearance as she stood there in her skimpy dress, her short dusky hair falling in masses about her neck and over her forehead. There came to the young journalist a remembrance of those wingless angels that the pre-Raphaelite masters painted, gracious, grave, workaday beings, with unearthly wise faces. But it was not as a picture that he contemplated Meg; the thought of the goodness, the purity, the holiness of the child, who knew so much and understood so little of life, overcame him. Her innocence almost frightened him. He felt the sacredness of a vow taken to her; it would be more binding than one taken before a court of justice.

"What is it that you want me to promise, Meg?" he asked.

"Not to let them take your money from you, not to let them give you drink," she replied with her accustomed unhesitancy, but her voice faltering with harbored longing.

"Not drink at all?" he asked.

"I wish not at all; I wish not at all," she replied with unconscious repetition.

"Look here, Meg; I'll promise you this—I'll not waste my money, and I'll not tipple like Mrs. Browne downstairs. Will that satisfy you?"

"You promise!" said Meg vehemently, with another upward flash of the well-formed little brown hand, and holding him with her eyes.

"I promise," said Mr. Standish gravely, disguising an inclination to laugh.

The young man was busy in the intervals of journalistic work composing a political squib. He had not so much time to devote to Meg as in the less-employed days, but he allowed her to sit near him when he wrote, reading the story-books and ballads he gave her. In his leisure, as he smoked his pipe, he watched with half-closed eyes the quaint little figure, and drew the child out to talk. He explained the difficult passages in the books she read, and gave her lessons in recitation. Better than anything to Meg, he sometimes imparted to her the last bon mot he had put into the mouth of "Sultan Will" to his suffering subjects—a confidence that invariably produced abnormal gravity in Meg.

The child had no reason to think the young man was not fulfilling the promise he had given. His alert carriage and concentrated expression contradicted any suspicion of faltering. Yet she was restless; his friends came often to see him.

"Why did they come, disturbing him at his work?" she asked spitefully.

Mr. Standish called her a hard little taskmaster, and received his friends cordially. A formless fear was at the child's heart. She haunted the threshold of his door when they were in his room; she lay awake of nights when she knew that he had gone out with them. She magnified to herself the number of times that he had gone out earlier and come home later than he used. If she dropped asleep her slumbers were broken until she heard the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.

One evening Mr. Standish went off in company with two journalistic comrades to a public dinner, given to members of the press by the directors of a new railway company. Meg would not retract the unfavorable verdict she pronounced upon his appearance in the new dress suit he had ordered specially for the occasion. She was not to be mollified by the promise of an orange from the directors' table. "She did not want an orange; she did not see what a dinner had to do with a railway," she averred.

That night she could not sleep. The formless fear at her heart lay heavy upon it; it seemed to her that the fulfillment of that nameless dread was approaching. As the hour came and passed Mr. Standish had fixed for his return, visions began to group about her bed and pass before her wide-open eyes. All the sorrowful stories of accidents Mr. Standish had related to her enacted themselves before her, in which he appeared the central figure. The night plodded slowly on; the clock in the hall struck the hours at intervals. When the clock struck three Meg got up and paced about the room, a wan little ghost.

When another hour struck the four peals sounded like a hammer-stroke on a coffin. Meg began to dress. She did not know why she did so, or what she would do after, but a vague sense of being needed impelled her. She fumbled her way to the staircase and sat on the topmost step.

She waited in the darkness and silence. A faint whiteness began to steal through the sides of the blinds drawn over the window on the lobby. The banisters, the flight of stairs, showed shadowily, gradually growing more distinct.

Suddenly she sprang to her feet. There was the scrape of a key in the latch. A step sounded in the hall, made its way up the stairs. It was Mr. Standish. When he reached the topmost flight of steps he perceived the little gray figure standing waiting in the gray dawn, erect, immobile. He steadied himself against the banisters and began to laugh. He looked pale, his eyes dark; his hat was thrown back, his hair disordered.

"Why, Meg, you little detective, are you there? Such a jolly night! splendid dinner! No humbug this time, Meg—real turtle, tuns of champagne!" He came up a few steps. "Tuns of champagne, Meg! Speeches, Meg! Such nonsense! Everybody complimented everybody else. I did not forget you, Meg. Look here, I stole an orange and sweetmeats!" He began fumbling in his pockets.

"You've broken your promise," said the child in a low and trembling voice.

"Not a bit of it, Meg. Now you think I am tipsy," he replied, speaking huskily. "Not a bit of it. You'll see if I can't walk straight as a lamp post to that door."

As he went up he staggered—she had not seen him stumble before—caught himself by the balustrade, then plunged forward with uneven steps.

Instinctively Meg put out her hand, but he did not see it. Catching at the wall he fell into a fit of laughing; then making his way to his room he let the door slam behind him.

Meg was petrified. All that she had dreaded seemed to have happened. She sat down, her throat burning, her body cold, as if a shroud enfolded her. She remained huddled and moveless until signs of life began to be heard in the house. Then she got up and crept into her attic.

CHAPTER III.

MEG TO THE RESCUE.

Mr. Standish saw no more of Meg for some days. He made no attempt at reconciliation. It amused him to think how Meg magnified his offense. It seemed comical that the child should set him down as a drunkard. He laughed out loud over it as he drank his single glass of lager beer at dinner. In his workaday life he avoided taking his glass of grog. He never indulged in it, for economical reasons. With his brothers of the press he took a convivial glass, but as for squandering money, he had none to spend.

After a few days, as Meg remained sternly invisible, he began to miss her, as a man might miss a favorite dog. To his inquiries concerning the child, Mrs. Browne or Jessie replied, she was "that" cross there was no biding her.

If he caught a glimpse of Meg she would vanish at his approach, and no call or song could entice her from her retreat. Then Mr. Standish made up his mind the child was absurdly unjust, and that in time she would come round; still he was more sorry than he allowed himself to acknowledge at her desertion. His work had grown upon him, an old debt harassed him, and he had lately received a sufficiently unpleasant surprise to occupy his mind.

Meanwhile, the passionate little figure, hidden in the shadow of the half-open door, watched his coming and going with keener vigilance. From her hiding-place the child scanned his countenance as he came and went; and at night fell into broken slumbers, until the sound of his returning footsteps brought peace to her unquiet heart. If Meg had known how to pray, or had realized that she could effectively and without indecorum pray out of church, she would have climbed in spirit to the throne of the Most High, and with insistent appeal have interceded for the friend she confusedly felt was passing through some dread peril. But Meg's conception of the world beyond the grave was as of a great darkness, against which outlined itself a simpering countenance wreathed with roses, which was her mother's face. To that dear vision Meg was eloquent concerning her grief—brokenly, and with impatient and angry misery, murmured to it of Mr. Standish's breach of faith, of the certain ruin that was waiting him, and of her own wretchedness.

Mr. Standish's ways completely puzzled her, and the mystery added to that desperate sense of estrangement between them. Some time before their quarrel she had watched one day a shabby-genteel-looking man knock at the journalist's door, and, on its being opened, hand to Mr. Standish a paper which he received and glanced over, the child noticed, with an expression of surprised consternation. He did not invite the visitor in. Meg could not distinguish the purport of the talk that ensued between them, but heard Mr. Standish's last words, in the anxiously confident tones of which, she detected a ghost of displeasure: "There has been some delay, but give me time to write again to him and I am sure it will be all right."

On her inquiries concerning this mysterious visitor, with a face she described as a red plum-pudding, Mr. Standish had given evasive answers. From that day she noted, however, that he changed his hours of going out; he appeared anxious; he locked his door after him. Sometimes, as a pledge of confidence, he had left his key with her, and he had told her not to let anyone in during his absence.

A week after their falling out, Meg, in looking over the superscription of Mr. Standish's letter in the hall, recognized the delicate and familiar handwriting of one of the young man's friends—who was also her favorite antipathy. She had at one time often brought epistles in this handwriting that she suspected were begging petitions. This letter bore a foreign stamp.

That afternoon Mr. Standish's voice, for the first time since his quarrel, was uplifted in song. As he went out he paused, and softly called "Meg." But Meg, in the shadow, straightened herself; an aggressive light brightened her eyes; she hesitated. Had he called again she might have come, but with a half-vexed laugh and a shrug he ran downstairs.

For the first time, also, he had left the key in his door. The child stole toward the room, opened the door, and looked in. Her heart smote her with remorse and pity as she beheld the disorder, the uncared-for confusion that reigned within—slippers pitched at different corners of the room; the tobacco-pouch half emptying its contents in a manuscript, the dust lying heavy on papers and books, the boot-jack inside the silver inkstand that had belonged to his father.

In a moment Meg was at her old task of setting the room in order. Flitting hither and thither, she zealously dusted, swept, put the books back into their accustomed places. She knew exactly where every volume was to stand. As she scrubbed and worked, the hard knot at her little heart loosened. She had proceeded some way at her task when she came upon a paper. She recognized the nature of the paper at a glance; she had seen such a missive in Mrs. Browne's possession before. It was a summons to appear before the county court. She read the words on the paper. The summons was taken out by one Abraham Samuels, who held a bill overdue for £25. The court was to sit on Wednesday, November 16th. To-day was the 26th—ten days later.

Meg stood stock-still with the paper in her hand. This was the paper the strange man had brought. She thought of Mr. Standish's brightened mood; what did it mean? Had he paid the debt? A tear dropped on the summons as she dwelt upon that past anxiety. How could she atone for having kept away so sternly? The only way that presented itself to her mind for displaying the energy of her repentance was by rubbing the furniture till it shone in the firelight. She put the last touch to her work by filling the two vases with late autumn foliage and yellow chrysanthemums, bought with her remaining pence. It was late that night when the journalist returned, but she noticed that he bounded lightly up the stairs, and she turned happily on her side and fell asleep. Mr. Standish was not up next morning when Meg set off for school.

He was out when she returned. As she was sallying forth on an errand for Mrs. Browne she perceived Jessie in deep confabulation with a smooth-voiced stranger in the hall, who was apparently making himself agreeable to the slavey. At a glance she recognized him to be the stranger with the face like a red plum-pudding, who had handed that summons to Mr. Standish.

In a flash she recollected the key was in the door of the journalist's room. The next moment her bounding young feet had carried her up the stairs, and she had locked the door, and dropped the key into her apron pocket, before the representative of justice came panting up on the scene. Meg's experience of life had included strange branches of education. She had watched the maneuvers of debtors to keep bailiffs at bay, and the strategy of the men in authority to get into possession.

"What do you want?" she inquired, standing before the threshold she was defending.

"I want Mr. Standish—a writing gent. I've got news for him," replied the stranger with an air of business.

"Can't see him," said Meg briefly. "He's out, and the door's locked."

"Now, that's awful unfortunate," replied the visitor, with an air of perplexed consternation. "Those writing gents make their living by getting news, and my news is so important that he ought to know it."

"What news is it? I'll tell him when he comes in," said Meg curtly.

"Can't do that, missy. Now, I take it," continued the stranger insinuatingly, "you know where the key of that room is. If you let me in, I'll give you the prettiest, shiniest sixpence you ever saw. Come, now, let me in, and I'll write my news down for the gent. My time's precious-like, you see."

"Who are you? Where do you come from?" asked Meg.

"I come from his newspaper office. I am what these writing gents call a printer's devil, ha, ha, ha!"—and the stranger bubbled over with enjoyment of his own joke.

"You're telling an awful fib," said Meg, red to the roots of her hair. "You are a bailiff. I've seen bailiffs," and she nodded, "and I know their dodges. You want to get into Mr. Standish's room to take his things—that's what you want to do."

"Eh, now, you are clever—as clever as clever can be—the prettiest, cleverest little girl!" rejoined the visitor admiringly.

"Do you think," said Meg, evidently taking no notice of the compliment, "that a man ought to be punished who is always very kind and good, and who works—works so hard—I could not tell you how hard; who eats very little, and who scarcely drinks ever at all—that is, very seldom." Meg dashed away a tear, and went on with energy, advancing with restless steps. "If this good man has friends who are bad, dishonest, lazy drunkards, who take all his money and don't give it back, don't you think it is they who ought to be punished, not the good man?"

"Well, missy, there's a deal in what you say—a deal," said the stranger ponderingly; then, as Meg approached, lost in her pleading, he made a sudden flop forward, and almost clutched her skirt, gasping, "That's a pretty apron, missy—a nice little apron."

But Meg had whisked the apron out of his grasp; and, dancing back, shook the hair out of her eyes. "You wickedest man! trying to get the key out of my pocket! But I'll not let you have it. I'll throw it out of that window into the gutter that runs down there sooner than let you have it." Meg as she spoke opened the window in the lobby, and kept near it.

"Then here I'll sit!" said the bailiff, depositing his burly form on the stair.

"How long will you sit there?" asked Meg.

"That's none of your business. I'll sit till he comes up. I believe he's a scamp. Those hauthors and hartists are. I know lots of 'em. I warrant he's in the tavern spending his money."

"I hate you!" cried Meg with a flash, her bosom heaving, her little red lips drawn tight over her teeth.

There was something pitiably droll in the attitude of the child, standing at a safe distance, clutching her pocket, quivering with helpless wrath, before the impassable persecutor. With a sudden spring she turned and dashed away, pausing to open a little wider the window that let in the draft upon the bailiff.

"You'll get frightful rheumatism waiting there, and I'm glad of it," she cried, as she disappeared.

Mr. Standish, returning half an hour later, saw a small figure promenading up and down before the house under a dripping umbrella. It was Meg. She was by his side in a moment.

"Come this minute," she said, putting her hand into his.

"Why, Meg," he said cheerily, yet surprised at her manner; "so you have forgiven me at last!"

She did not answer; but as he was about to open the hall door with his latchkey, she said laconically, "Not this way," and led him round by the back way.

Meg flitted up the narrow stairs before him, every now and then turning back with forefinger on lips to enjoin silence. Up, up she went, until she reached the attic that was her own room. She signed to him to enter, and then shut the door.

"Why, what is this for, Meg," said Mr. Standish, looking round.

"He's here—the bailiff—waiting on the stairs, but he can't get in. I locked the door and kept the key; here it is." With an expressive twinkle of her eyes she whisked it out of her pocket, and put it into his hand.

Mr. Standish sat down, looked at Meg, scarce understanding. "Bailiff!" he repeated. "Then Gilbert has not paid! I backed his bill because I trusted his sacred promise that he would meet it in time!"

"It was kind, but foolish," said Meg briefly.

"He wrote the other day to say he would make it all right with Samuels, when I told him of the writ. He assured me the money was going by the next post," Mr. Standish went on blankly.

"He's an old cheat," said Meg, with scornful directness of speech.

"What is to be done? I have no money, Meg," said the young man, with a wretched flicker of a smile.

"Pawn your watch and chain—they're real gold; they're big and heavy; they'll raise the money," said Meg, with her usual unhesitancy.

The journalist flushed red. "I can't, Meg!" He drew the watch out of his pocket. It was a large hunting watch, that had been presented to the rector, his father. Inside the lid the names of the donors were inscribed in minute characters. "I can't, Meg," he repeated, looking at it and shaking his head. "A token of affectionate gratitude, a testimonial to his faithful work—I can't place it where there are so many associations that are disgraceful. It would be degradation——"

"Not a bit of it!" said Meg with fearless rapidity, as he rose and walked up and down the attic. "You'll get it back soon. You'll work hard to get it out. If you don't pawn it you'll have to let that man in," nodding in the direction of the staircase. "He'll sit in your room. You'll be able to do no work with him there, smelling of gin, and his red face looking at you. He'll take the silver ink-bottle—and the books. Pawn your watch, and if you work hard you'll get it out soon."

"Wise, practical Meg," said Mr. Standish, scarcely able to repress a smile, moving irresolutely about the little room.

"Give it to me! I'll pawn it for you," rejoined Meg, intent and business-like. "I've been there before. Last time Mrs. Browne put the silver teapot up the spout I went for her. She was tipsy; she could not go. The man knows me. He'll give me the money."

"I have not the heart to do it Meg—I have not the heart," said Mr. Standish, hesitating as the child approached.

"It's better than having the man inside your room, sitting on your green velvet armchair or the chintz sofa, taking the silver ink-bottle and the books, and preventing your working," continued Meg, pressing her advantage; and as Mr. Standish began slowly to unloose the chain, her deft fingers came to the rescue and helped him.

He looked down at the eager, determined child-face. "How good you are to me, Meg; how good!" he said, the words rushing almost unconsciously to his lips.

A quiver of the eyelids only showed the child felt the tones. "Give it to me," she repeated imperatively.

The next moment the watch and chain, wrapped in a clean pocket-handkerchief, were in Meg's grasp, and she had departed. Mr. Standish, stooping under the shelving ceiling on a level with the strip of window, looked out and watched the wet umbrella making its way under the flaring gas and over the muddy street. When it disappeared he turned and looked about him. There was a sincerity, a poverty, a purity about the tiny chamber that affected him with a wholesome shock. Over the little white bed hung the fashion-plate that he had mended, in the pasteboard frame he had manufactured for it. A bit of scarlet ribbon fastened it to a nail, with an elaborate bow. Above it, as a pious Catholic might have crossed about some saint's image branches of blessed palms, so Meg had placed sprigs of lavender, that delicately scented the room. On the peg behind the door hung the little Sunday frock, turned inside out. On a table, under a clean pocket-handkerchief, were placed three books that he had given her—a volume of ballads, "Stories from the History of England," a gaudily illustrated shilling copy of "Cinderella." Also under the pocket-handkerchief was a bundle of paper, tied with scarlet ribbon, that proved to be some of his articles neatly cut out. A black clay pipe of his, which Meg had mended, was put up like a little Indian idol over the table. The little room, so spotlessly clean, and so characteristic in all its details, was distinctly Meg's room, telling of that mystic love for her mother, and of her solitary friendship.

Mr. Standish was not tired of waiting when Meg appeared, her hand clutching the bodice of her dress.

"Here, I've got the money," she said, as carefully pulling out the handkerchief and opening it she displayed a roll covered with paper; "twenty-five pounds—count; and here's the ticket. Don't lose it on any account. Perhaps I'd better keep it for you."

"Twenty-five pounds, Meg!" said Mr. Standish.

"He wanted to give me twenty. I said 'No, twenty-five.' He was smiling when he said twenty. Those men always smile when they want to cheat you," said Meg, with a nod of retrospective observation. "He gave me twenty-five pounds at last, though. Count."

The child cut short the words of thankfulness that rose to Mr. Standish's lips.

"Go," she said imperatively, taking him by the hand and leading him to the door; "pay the man and get him off."

A few minutes later, with great glee, Meg watched the departure of the bailiff; she thought with pleasure as he made his way downstairs that he seemed a little stiff, as if he had got rheumatism. After the hall door had slammed behind the representative of the law she stood hesitating. Soon her diffident feet slowly brought her to Mr. Standish's threshold. She pushed the door softly open. He was sitting by the table, his face covered with his hands. He looked up as she entered.

"He's gone," said Meg, nodding. "Aren't you glad?"

"You have done me a great service, Meg. How can I thank you for it?" said the young man, rising and taking the child's two hands in his.

"Don't thank me—not at all," said Meg with ardor, looking up into his face. "Just promise never to lend your money again—never."

"No—never again!" replied Mr. Standish, shaking his head. He led the child in and sat down, still keeping her hand in his. "How did you guess that man was a bailiff?"

"Oh," said Meg, with the scornful brevity of wide experience in her voice, "I knew him by his sleeky ways. I've watched them at their dodges. They're up to almost anything."

Mr. Standish laughed out loud; but the laugh suddenly fell as he thought of all that knowledge implied. He said gently, after a pause:

"I thought the little friend who used to sit by my fireside had left me. I missed you, Meg."

"You were tipsy that night," the child answered, with a quaver in her voice that did not take from its severity.

"You punished me hard, Meg. Don't you know I had to drink so many healths. There was the queen's health to drink, and I should have been a disloyal subject if I had not drunk that; and there was the lord mayor's health, I should have been a bad citizen if I had not drunk that; then there were the directors' healths, and there were one another's healths." As Meg remained unmollified, he went on, "Meg, I will tell you a secret. I was not so bad as I looked that night—I put it on a little for your benefit."

"That was wicked of you," said Meg with spirit.

"It was," agreed Mr. Standish candidly. "Come, Meg, won't you forgive me if I promise——"

"You promised before," interrupted the child.

A desire to rehabilitate himself in the child's eyes seized Mr. Standish. He felt a touch of awe of that creature regarding him with steady gravity, and he found himself pleading his cause before her as if she were a little chief justice.

"If he got himself into difficulties for his friends, they were often to be pitied; so many in this world were born weak, like spiritual cripples who needed a helping hand."

"No use to them when they get it," said Meg. "They're always in a muddle."

Mr. Standish once more repressed an inclination to laugh at the child's precocious wisdom. He admitted there was truth in what she said. Once, three years ago, just before coming here, he had given all he had to a friend, and it had been of no use.

"Did you lend him much money?" asked Meg.

"Yes; he was in the greatest distress. I loved him, Meg. I would do it again if he came to me. If he was reckless, he was so handsome and so jolly. He came and told me all about his trouble. His father was very stern; he would not see him or help him. My friend wanted three hundred pounds. It was all the money that I had."

"And you gave it?" she said, and stopped.

He nodded.

"Did he never pay you back?" she faltered.

"Never, Meg. It is a sad story. There was some disgrace, and he died."

She did not speak; the fate of the stranger seemed to affect her but little.

"You gave him all your money?" she repeated, and again she paused; then she put out her hand and stroked his head, with a look of tender and ineffable admiration.

CHAPTER IV.

FAREWELL.

There followed a time of perfect happiness for Meg, during which, for a few weeks, she sat by her friend's fireside, watched him at his writing, listened to his reading, ruled over the meals that he took at home, and questioned him concerning those that he took abroad.

On a memorable afternoon they celebrated together, with much pomp, over a banquet of jam puffs and lemonade at a confectioner's shop in the Tottenham Court Road, the redemption from pawn of his father's gold watch and chain. Meg again played the part of Deus ex machina in the transaction, and personally paid the ransom of the precious pledge. In honor of the event, Mr. Standish presented her with a copy of Goldsmith's "Animated Nature," with "Meg" printed in gold letters on the cover. The sight of her name thus honored overcame the child. He explained to her, when she appeared inclined to rebuke him for extravagance that the political squib, the jokes which used to have a depressing effect upon her, had brought him the unlooked-for cash.

Shortly after this festivity Mr. Standish's movements once more became erratic. Meg could discover no signs, however, of the symptoms that she feared. He seemed mysteriously elated and full of business, yet he wrote less. He admitted when she questioned him that something was absorbing his time, but his answers were evasive concerning the nature of this new interest. He promised that she would know what it was shortly.

One day Mr. Standish had a long talk with Mrs. Browne over a bottle of sherry, after which he went out and returned late. The landlady was maudlinly effusive over Meg that evening, puzzled the child with her ramblingly affectionate talk, and filled her with vague apprehension. Mr. Standish's answers to Meg's queries were also unsatisfactory.

A few days later a dandified elderly gentleman wearing a frilled shirt visited the journalist. As he was leaving Mr. Standish called Meg in, and introduced her to the visitor as "the child I spoke to you about." The elderly gentleman looked at her peeringly, with his head on one side. He chuckled, patted her cheek, and told her if she were a good girl something wonderful might happen to her. The announcement, far from cheering Meg, deepened the foreboding in her heart.

That evening she softly entered Mr. Standish's room. A confused dread seized her when she saw the floor littered with books and papers lying about in parcels. The journalist was sitting by the fire, abstractedly poking the embers.

Meg touched his elbow. "Are you not going to write to-night?" she asked in a low voice.

"Not to-night, Meg. I am going to talk to you instead."

She remained motionless by his chair, questioning him with her glance only.

Still he did not speak. After a moment or two he said abruptly, "Meg would you like to go to school?"

"I go to school every day. What do you mean?" she asked, looking at him with quick suspicion.

"I mean quite another sort of school—one kept by ladies, and where your schoolfellows would be ladies; where you would make lots of nice friends; and where you will sleep at night instead of——"

"You mean go away from here—quite?" interrupted Meg, growing pale to the lips.

"Yes," he answered.

"What do you want me to go away for?" she demanded, a flash of anger in her eyes.

"Because I do not like to leave you with no one but Mrs. Browne to look after you; and I am going away."

"When?" she asked tremulously.

"To-morrow."

She gave an exclamation that sounded like a cry.

He drew her to him.

"Listen, Meg. It will make me very unhappy if I think you are fretting when I am gone. I want my little friend to be brave; she must not fret."

"Where are you going?" she faltered, mastering her emotion.

"I am going to travel and write accounts of what I see, for a newspaper that will pay me very well. It is a great lift for me, Meg, and I want you to have your lift also."

She did not speak, but kept her eyes fixed upon his face. He then gently and guardedly told her that he had got from Mrs. Browne the name of the family solicitor who paid for her keep. He had gone to see him to speak of Meg. The elderly gentleman with the frilled shirt, who had patted her on the head, was the solicitor in question. His name was Mr. Fullbloom. The young man did not tell the child that he had found out how shamefully misapplied by the landlady was the allowance she received, nor did he tell her that he had made in writing a vivid statement of her forlorn and neglected condition in the boarding-house.

He laid as light stress as he could on the refusal of the solicitor to give up the name of the child's mysterious patron.

"Some one takes a great interest in you, Meg," he said in conclusion; "and Mr. Fullbloom came to assure me from that person that you would now be placed in a first-rate school, where you will have plenty of comrades of your own age, teachers who will care for you; and you will grow up to be a little lady, like your mother in the picture."

Meg listened cold and silent to the end.

"Won't you be glad to go to school to be educated?"

"No," she answered, stiffening herself and jerking out her words, relapsing in her excitement into her old pronunciation. "I will hate going. I don't want to be edicated. What do I want to be edicated for? And if you cared for me you would not wish me to go away, you would not."

Tears stood in her eyes, but anger kept them from falling.

"Do you wish to remain here when I am gone Meg?" he asked.

"No," she replied faintly, as if her heart failed her at the suggestion. "Why can't I go where you go? Who'll light your fire for you, who'll look after you? You want somebody to look after you."

"I know it, Meg, and no one would look after me as you would."

"I'd not want much to eat or drink," Meg went on, alive to the economical side of the question; "and once you said you felt lonely without me."

"So I will, Meg," he answered, drawing her nearer and keeping his arm about her. "And it is just because I care for you that I want you to go to school, that I want you to learn all that can be taught you. I want your little hands to grow soft, that now are hard with housework for me."

The child's face worked, but she controlled the rising sob.

"Listen, Meg. It may be in five years, it may be in six years, it may be when you are a tall, accomplished young girl of eighteen, I shall come to the school where you are, and—" He paused.

"Take me home to be your housekeeper?" said Meg.

A laugh drifted to his face.

"Better than that. We will be friends, close friends, such friends as never were, if you go to this school," he said.

"You promise?" said the child, holding him with her eyes.

He nodded. "I promise, Meg."

"Then I will go to that school," she said submissively, putting her hand into his.

Until eight o'clock, when she usually said good-night, Meg helped Mr. Standish to pack up. She asked to be allowed to remain up a little longer, but he refused the petition.

"It is not good-by, Meg; it is good-night only," he said cheerily, stroking her head; then stooping, he kissed the child's forehead. "God bless you, little Meg!"

Meg did not go to bed. She made no pretense to undress. She lay on the floor of her attic all night, letting the solitude of the coming years pass in anticipation over her heart. In the gray of the morning some furtive sounds reached her ears, and she sprang up listening. A few moments after, Mr. Standish, portmanteau in hand, emerged from his room. A gray little figure stood waiting for him in the dim dawn, as it had waited for him once before. It was Meg, pressing something to her heart.

"My child, I had hoped, I had planned to avoid this for you," he said. "I hoped you would be asleep."

Meg presents the old fashion-plate to her friend.—Page 61.

The child's lips moved, but she did not speak. Abruptly stretching out the hand that she had held pressed against her bosom she put something into his. It was the fashion-plate that had been to her as her mother's portrait.

"Is that for me, Meg?" he asked.

She nodded.

"I'll keep it safe. I'll give it back to you, Meg, when we meet again," he replied, tenderly folding the battered print and laying it inside his pocket-book.

The child kept a stern silence.

"We'll meet again, Meg; I promise you that. Poor little Meg!" he said feelingly. "It is hard for you; but I will write to you—I will write. No one will ever care for me as you have cared."

He kissed her, and as still she preserved the stern silence of repressed grief he turned quickly away. As he ran down he looked back and saw the child watching him, with her face thrust through the banisters.

He waved his hand to her and smiled. The next moment the hall door clapped below, and from above there came the sound of sobbing in the darkness.

CHAPTER V.

A MYSTERIOUS VISIT.

A few days after, in the early afternoon, as Meg was sitting on the floor in her attic with the bundle of articles given her by Mr. Standish spread out on her lap, the books he had given her on the floor around her, the door opened and Mrs. Browne entered.

Meg had been silent and repellent since her friend's departure. She had lived alone, communing with her grief.

The landlady sat down on the child's bed and began rocking herself backward and forward, uttering faint moans.

Meg looked at her gravely and apparently unmoved.

"What are you crying for?" she asked at last, when Mrs. Browne's moans became too emphatic to be passed over in silence.

"I am going to lose you, Meg—after all these years—There's a gentleman downstairs—waiting to take you away. Oh! oh! oh!" moaned Mrs. Browne.

"A gentleman—what gentleman?" asked Meg with trembling eagerness, a light springing to her eyes, for her thoughts had flown to her only friend.

"A kind gentleman—Mr. Fullbloom—You must remember, Meg, as I always said—Mr. Fullbloom—pays for you regular—regular as quarter-day comes, he pays. Remember, as I always said it—And now he's come to take you away from me—who loves you as a mother."

"Is he coming to take me away to that school?" asked Meg, sitting up straight, speaking in curt and business-like tones.

"Yes, you're to go to a school—a grander school—a ladies' school—and you'll forget me, who loved you like a mother."

Meg did not answer. She began to prepare rapidly for her departure. She was going to the school; and this was the first step toward rejoining Mr. Standish in the future.

She paid no heed to Mrs. Browne's feeble grieving over the shabbiness of her wardrobe, her unmended boots, and to the landlady's repeated injunctions to "speak up for me who has been good to you as a mother to the gentleman." Every week, Mrs. Browne protested, she had meant to buy Meg a pretty dress and hat.

"What do I want with a fine dress at school for? I am going to learn—that's what I am going to do. I am going to be a lady," said Meg severely, locking the writing-case, a present from Mr. Standish, in which she had deposited her bundle of articles, and wrapping her books in brown paper.

"The gentleman says you're to take nothing with you except just what will go in a little bag," said Mrs. Browne; "and I've brought you my best hand-bag."

"I'll not go away without these things," said Meg ardently. "I'll not go to school or nowhere without them."

Mrs. Browne shook her head; but Meg was not to be moved.

A few minutes' later, attired in her Sunday garments, her feet shod in worn boots, Meg, carrying her parcel, went downstairs, followed by Mrs. Browne. In the best parlor stood the gentleman she had once seen in Mr. Standish's room, and to whom she had been introduced as the "little girl I spoke to you of."

He still wore a frilled shirt and tapped a silver snuffbox, and he looked at Meg with his head very much on one side.

"Ready to go—ready to go!" he said in a quick chirping voice. "Not crying, eh? not crying?"

Meg disengaged her hand to take the one proffered to her.

"Can't take that parcel," said Mr. Fullbloom, shaking his head. "Can't take it."

"Then I won't go away—I won't go to the school without it," said Meg with fierce decision.

"Tut, tut, tut!" said the lawyer. "What's inside it? Lollipops, eh? lollipops?"

"No," said Meg, pale with eagerness; "it's books and things—keepsakes. I'll never part with them—never!"

"Oh, hoity-toity!" said Mr. Fullbloom, then impressed with the child's resolute look. "Well, well," he added, jerking his head to the other side, "perhaps we'll find a place for it in the carriage."

Then once more Mrs. Browne lifted up her voice, and weeping embraced Meg, who submitted to her caress with a certain stiff-backed irresponsiveness. It is probable that if Meg had been called under other circumstances to leave the gloomy old boarding-house and the boozy landlady, about whom clustered all the associations of her childhood, she would have felt the pang of the uprooting; but an absorbing affection now filled her little heart, and with it had come new hopes and ambition.

A brougham was waiting at the door. Into it she stepped, and after her, Mr. Fullbloom. The next moment she was driving swiftly and silently along. It was all very strange; yet Meg did not feel surprised. Grief had lifted her unconsciously to a higher level of expectation; all unknowingly her attitude toward life was changed.

She was vaguely aware that she was the object of her companion's amused and attentive observation. For all his waggish ways and darting movements Mr. Fullbloom had a shrewd and observant mind. He was a lawyer, accustomed to note with discriminating eye external signs that gave him the clew to the personality of those with whom he came in contact. It had grown to be a second nature with him to take note of appearances. This little maid's imperturbable demeanor before the tears of Mrs. Browne, her quick, fearless trust in him, her determined attitude toward the bundle covered with brown paper, piqued his curiosity, and moved a deeper interest in her than that which he usually accorded to children. The clear-cut little profile, he acknowledged, had a character of its own. Meg's attitude, as she sat upright and somewhat stiffly, partook of the same individuality. Mr. Fullbloom noted every detail of the child's dress—the well-worn turban hat crowning the brown crop of hair, the shabby velveteen dress, the weather-beaten jacket with its border of mangy fur, the old boots, the darned worsted gloves covering the hands that clasped the parcel.

"I think I know a little girl who is not very sorry to leave the old house—not sorry," he said at last, stooping forward and cocking his head with that bird-like swiftness.

"I want to go to that school. Are we going there now?" inquired Meg.

"Perhaps we are—perhaps we are not—perhaps we are going to a fairy palace," replied Mr. Fullbloom with a suggestive sidelong glance.

Meg looked at him smilelessly.

"There are no fairies," she said curtly. "Am I going to that school?"

"Before I tell I want to know who gave you those keepsakes—who was it? The clever young gentleman who took such an interest in little Miss Meg, and who had set his heart so much upon her going to school—was it?" said Mr. Fullbloom facetiously, laying his hand upon the bundle.

"Mr. Standish," answered Meg softly; and the lawyer was astonished at the emotion perceptible on the child's face. It seemed to quiver like the chords of a harp upon which a hand is laid.

The silence was broken, and the lawyer began to question. Meg was guarded and reticent in her monosyllabic replies; but by a few leading questions the lawyer got from her what he wished to know.

He became satisfied that the picture Mr. Standish had drawn of her isolation, neglect, and half-servile position in the boarding-house was unexaggerated. His veiled cross-examination was scarcely concluded before the brougham drew up before a large house overlooking a square, in which tall trees cast their shade athwart the smoothly shaven turf.

"Was this grand house the lady's school?" thought Meg.

A solemn man in black opened the door; an imposing being in a gold-buttoned coat, plush breeches, and silk stockings came forward, and Meg by a dexterous move just rescued her parcel from his officious clutches.

Mr. Fullbloom led her into a side room, saying as he left her that he would be back immediately. The firelight glowed upon frames and mirrors, delicate porcelains, and blue satin hangings. For a few moments the little Cinderella figure remained standing immobile amid these surroundings, lost in wonder, then the lawyer returned, and taking her by the hand conducted her upstairs.

Who was she going to see now? Was she about to be brought before the master or mistress of this fairy palace?

Meg was aware of passing through a room larger and more splendid than the one she had just left. Then Mr. Fullbloom pushed open a door and ushered her into another room furnished with bookcases filled with books, a long table, and dark leather chairs.

An old gentleman was sitting there. His chair was against the window, so that his face was in shadow, but his white hair shone. He was leaning back; there was something rigid in his attitude; his long white hands grasped the arms of the chair.

"Here is the little girl," said Mr. Fullbloom.

The white-haired gentleman made no sign of greeting, and did not speak for a moment; but a close observer might have noticed, even in that half-light, a slight twitch of the old hand.

"You are the little girl who spent all your life in Mrs. Browne's boarding-house?" he said at last, abruptly.

"Yes, sir," said Meg with a quiver in her voice.

In her heart she thought the elderly gentleman was not to be compared in appearance with the glittering footman; but his chill stare seemed to freeze her.

"You remember no other place? You have never been to another?" he asked.

"I remember other places, but I have never lived in another place," said Meg with her usual accuracy.

"What is your name?"

"Meg."

"Meg what?"

"Browne," said Meg.

"No, that is not your name. Beecham is your name. Don't forget—Beecham."

"Beecham?" repeated Meg, amazed.

"Take off your hat!" said her interlocutor.

Meg lifted her left hand to obey, but the elastic caught in her hair, and she put her precious parcel down to free her right hand.

"You were to take nothing out of that house," said the old gentleman sternly.

"I won't give them up—I won't!" cried Meg with kindling countenance, and with hands outstretched to protect her parcel.

"You won't!" repeated the old gentleman with frozen severity. Mr. Fullbloom bent over his chair. There was a whispered colloquy. Then the old gentleman said in a voice that might have been that of an audible icicle: "You may keep those things if you do not ask for anything else."

"I do not want anything else," said Meg with energy.

"Turn to the light."

Meg, all rebellion smoothed from her countenance, turned, obedient as a light-haunting flower, toward the gleam of sunshine filtering through the heavy curtains. The light fell caressingly on the spirited little face in its renewed quietude.

"That will do," said the old gentleman; and he fell into a brooding silence.

"This little girl wants to grow up a learned little lady—a learned little lady," put in Mr. Fullbloom cheerily after a pause.

"Yes, that is what I want to be," answered Meg with an eager nod.

"If you are sent to school," resumed the stranger sternly, bending on the child a glance that seemed to her to be one of aversion, "you must promise never to speak of that time spent in the boarding-house. You are to forget everything that happened there, and everybody you met there."

"I'll not forget every one. There is one person I will never forget—never," replied Meg with energy.

"Mr. Standish, the young man who was her friend. Can't ask her to forget him yet—can't do that," put in Mr. Fullbloom in a tone of jaunty conciliation, shaking his head. "I feel sure Meg will not speak about him."

"I don't want to talk about him," said Meg, her voice instinct with the sacredness of her affection.

"Do you know how to read?" asked the old gentleman.

"Yes," replied Meg briefly.

Her mysterious questioner opened a volume, turned rapidly over the pages until he came to one where a chapter ended. He passed his forefinger over the page with a heaviness that widened the delicate nail.

"When a chapter is done, it is done—you turn the page." He suited the action to the words and brought his palm down upon the book. "You understand?" Meg nodded. "You begin another chapter—the first chapter of your life is finished—you understand?" Again Meg nodded. "It was an ugly chapter—it remains with you to make the next chapter a better and a finer one."

"I will not talk of anybody or of anything; but I will always think of one person," persisted Meg, intent upon making the conditions of the bargain clear between her and this stranger.

"I cannot dictate to your thoughts," he replied. "I want you to promise not to speak about the past. What will you say when you are questioned concerning it by teachers, schoolfellows, or servants?"

"I'll tell them it's none of their business, that's what I will tell them," said Meg, with spirit and a relapse into a pronunciation that savored more of Mrs. Browne's than of Mr. Standish's influence.

Mr. Fullbloom chuckled, but the old man remained smileless.

"I have nothing more to add; take the child away," he said.

Mr. Fullbloom put out his hand to Meg. She hesitated, looking toward the old gentleman to say good-by.

Once more the child encountered a glance that seemed to freeze her with its mysterious dislike and she went out in silence.

CHAPTER VI.

MISS REEVES' ESTABLISHMENT FOR YOUNG LADIES.

Moorhouse was a red brick mansion of Elizabethan architecture, standing on the outskirts of the old-fashioned town of Greyling, nestling under a misty embattlement of distant downs. Tracts of ferny solitudes and clumps of woodland lay beyond, cloven by the long straight road that led Londonward. It was difficult to imagine that such rural peacefulness could be found at thirty miles distance from the big metropolis.

Moorhouse was a boarding-school for young ladies. It had gained a high reputation under the direction of its present head-mistress, Miss Reeves, a middle-aged lady of dignified appearance.

It was to Moorhouse Mr. Fullbloom was taking Meg. The child had never gone on a railway journey. The shriek and whistle of the engine as the train dashed along startled her. She felt whirled forward as by a demoniac force, and the pant of the engine seemed to her like the audible heart-beat of some dread monster. She sat rigid and silent in the corner by the window as she passed out of the station across the bridge-spanned river, past squalid streets and roofs crowding below. At last she emerged into more airy and peaceful surroundings. The speed and pant still filled the limpid daylight with terror; but Meg fought against her unstrung nerves and compelled herself to look out of the window. She was passing through a pageantry of meadows lying in the mild sunshine of the March afternoon; of cows grazing, of a pallid golden light in the sky, veiled with fleecy purple clouds. She heard the passing chirp of birds; she caught glimpses of leafless woods spreading a tracery of boughs against the brightness of the sky. There were banks flickering with suggestions of primroses under the hedges; undulating greenswards losing themselves in blue distances. Through the terror of that ride the influence of nature brought comfort to her heart. An exhilarating sense that she was traveling to a better land overcame fear. A house in the distance, perched on a height, with the sunlight on its windows, appeared to her a type of that school to which she was journeying; a sort of magic academy where she would grow worthy of becoming Mr. Standish's friend.

Mr. Fullbloom coughed and Meg turned her head. She caught the amused glance of her traveling companion fixed upon her. The solicitor had been dividing his attention between his paper and the child by his side. Meg had been unconscious of his investigation.

"Reach the school soon now," said the lawyer with his accustomed airy nod.

"I am glad of it," replied Meg.

"Want to be a learned little lady, eh?"

"Yes, that is just what I want to be," Meg answered in an eager tone; "learned as a lady."

"Well, so you will be—excellent school that of Miss Reeves—learn to dance, play the piano, to speak French, German—any amount of accomplishments. Bless me, there will be no talking to you in a year or two. Have to study hard, though."

Meg nodded in token of her readiness to face any amount of study.

"Don't forget your name—Beecham—it is not Browne. Madam was not your mother, or for the matter of that any relation," said the lawyer.

"I knew she was not my mother," said Meg in a low voice.

"No, indeed; light and darkness could not be more unlike."

"You knew my mother?" cried Meg, a flush kindling her cheeks.

"I knew her a little," replied the lawyer guardedly. "You are like her about the mouth and eyes."

"I am not a bit like her," Meg answered in a tone of offense. "She was beautiful—like an angel."

"Yes, she was beautiful," acquiesced Mr. Fullbloom.

Meg looked at the lawyer with a new expression. A halo surrounded his brow, for he had seen her mother.

"Did the old gentleman I saw to-day know her too?" she asked softly.

The lawyer put up his finger and wagged his head.

"Little girls must not ask questions. They must be seen, not heard," he replied, taking up his paper and growing absorbed in its contents.

He did not speak again until the train shortly after stopped at Greyling station.

Before long they had reached Moorhouse, and the door had opened for Meg. As she passed through the portal of the red brick mansion she felt as if she stood upon the threshold of a sanctuary. This sense deepened when, a few moments later, she was confronted by a majestic lady, whom the lawyer introduced to her as Miss Reeves, who looked at her kindly and scrutinizingly. After a low-voiced colloquy with Mr. Fullbloom at the other end of the room, Miss Reeves took her by the hand, saying:

"Your guardian has confided you to my care. I hope, my dear child, that we may both learn soon to love and trust each other."

Meg took with confidence the extended hand. Shortly after, Mr. Fullbloom bade her an airy farewell, and she followed Miss Reeves into a room where a meal was going on.

"Miss Grantley and Madame Vallaria," said the head-mistress addressing the two ladies sitting at either end of the table, "let me introduce to you a new pupil, and to you, young ladies, a new school-fellow—Miss Margaret Beecham. Ursula Grey, let her sit beside you; look after her, she is a stranger."

The room swam around Meg as she took her seat near a girl with a pleasant rosy face and bright eyes shining behind a pair of clever-looking spectacles. The child fancied she detected muffled exclamations, and that on all sides a stare was turned upon her which was not friendly.

The young ladies appeared to her beautifully dressed. They wore pretty brooches and necklaces of colored beads; their shining hair fell about their necks, and they had delicate bits of lace round their throats and wrists. One girl appeared to Meg so beautiful that she forgot everything in the delight of looking at her.

She was roused by a nudge of the elbow.

"Miss Grantley is speaking to you," said her spectacled neighbor. The young lady's lips were quivering with restrained smiles.

"Miss Beecham, will you take a glass of milk or a cup of cocoa?" said the lady at the head of the table.

Meg looked blankly in the direction of the speaker.

"Is not your name Beecham?" said this lady with a shade of annoyance in her voice.

Meg shook her head in the negative; then suddenly remembering the warning she had received not to forget:

"Yes—Beecham—that's my name," she said hurriedly, with the vivid nod that usually accompanied her assertions.

A titter went round the table.

"Hush!" said Miss Grantley severely.

Meg sat stiff and upright.

"Will you have milk or cocoa?" repeated Miss Grantley.

"Cocoa," blurted out Meg with monosyllabic brevity, in her confusion forgetting her manners.

She was intensely aware of the nudgings going on around her; of subdued fits of laughter shaking some of the young ladies; of the surprised stare of others. She caught Miss Grantley's cold glance.

Meg seized with both hands the cup passed on to her and hurriedly gulped down some of its contents.

As she put it down she again encountered shocked and amazed glances. An embarrassed misgiving fell upon her. Breaking her bread into small morsels she slowly munched, gazing down into her plate.

When she became aware of a general pushing back of chairs and of rising about her, Meg stood up. She knew the teacher was saying grace. Her spectacled neighbor then nodded.

"Come along," she said, and Meg followed.

The girls were pouring into another room. They at once surrounded Meg. The whispers became audible.

"Who is she?"

"Who brought her?"

"Where did she come from?"

To Meg's surprise, one of the girls approached her and said with familiar cordiality:

"What is your name—your real name, I mean?"

"My real name?" repeated Meg. She was standing inflexibly upright near a table.

"The name you were called by before to-day?" said her interrogator.

"You did not recognize your name when you were called Beecham—what is your real name?" said another.

Meg did not answer for a moment. She remembered her promise to the mysterious white-haired stranger. Then she said huskily:

"What does it signify what name I had before?"

Again she paused.

"Then you had another name?" said the pretty girl in a thin, high voice. "How very romantic!"

"Don't tease her—what does it signify?" put in Ursula.

"What does it signify?" was repeated all round in what Meg fancied a not unkindly tone. She took courage.

"What is in a name?" demanded one of the girls.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet would it not?" said another.

"Yes," said Meg, bewildered.

"Where did you live!" questioned one.

Meg remained mute. Again her promise to the mysterious stranger sealed her lips.

"Up a tree," suggested one.

"Second branch," said another with a laugh.

"Letters to you came addressed 'Miss What's-her-name, second branch, fourth tree, on the right side of the road,'" cried a third.

This description of Meg's late abode was greeted by peals of laughter.

"Visitors climbed up," suggested another.

"Why do you say those things?" asked Meg, looking round on the laughing faces. "I am come here to learn lessons—to grow up to be a lady. That's what I come for."

"A lady!" echoed all around her.

"A lady is born a lady," said a tall girl who had not spoken hitherto. She had a high nose and a voice of ice.

"My mother was a lady," said Meg.

"Your mother!" was echoed all around.

Meg did not answer; words seemed to tremble on her lips as she gazed on her tormentors.

"Is your dress her taste?" asked one.

"Did she teach you to say 'Cocoa' like that, without saying 'if you please'?" asked another, mimicking Meg's answer to Miss Grantley.

"My mother taught me nothing—she is dead," said Meg slowly.

There was a pause.

Then the tormentors began again.

"Are you sure you would know a lady if you saw one?"

"Would you call the grocer's wife a lady because she wears a silk dress?" demanded the Roman-nosed young lady in her chilly voice.

"No," said Meg with concentration.

"Does a lady go about playing the street-organ?" asked a fat, stupid-faced girl.

"No," again said Meg fiercely. Then addressing the assembly generally, but looking especially at the high-nosed young lady, she went on: "Why do you want to know all those things about me? It's idle curiosity—that's what I call it. And if my dress is ugly, what is that to you? I come here to learn lessons and to be a lady."

"But do you know what it is to be a lady?" replied the girl.

"One is born, not made a lady," said another.

"If," said Meg, trembling with energy, looking round on her persecutors, "to be a born lady makes one laugh at another because she's badly dressed, and to mock her because she's not got fine manners, then to be a born lady is to be vulgar and cruel—that's what I think."

For a moment there was silence; then the stupid-looking girl, coming close to Meg and thrusting her face near hers, said in a jeering drawl:

"I saw you and your mother selling matches in Bond Street last Easter holidays. Your mother had a red handkerchief round her head and a monkey under her arm."

"That is a falsehood!" said Meg. Up flashed the little brown hand and came down with a slap on the dull, mocking face.

There was a hubbub.

Cries of "She's a savage!" "A gypsy!"

"We will tell Miss Reeves," was vociferated on all sides.

Above the tumult rose the voice of Ursula:

"You deserved that slap, Laura Harris. Miss Beecham had told us her mother was dead. She has been teased too much."

A bell sounded and the head-mistress, followed by the other teachers and the servants, entered the room.

"Silence, young ladies," said Miss Reeves.

Prayer-time had come at Moorhouse.

CHAPTER VII.

AT SCHOOL.

Meg was going through the ordeal that her friend had set for her, and she strung herself to endurance. She felt she was tabooed by these fashionable young ladies, and she fiercely anticipated their neglect. She avoided them; she rejected Ursula's advances with impatience.

For awhile some of the girls felt a temptation to bait this little badger, but at last either the freshness or the excitement of the sport died away. Perhaps, too, a certain amount of fear restrained them. The slap administered to Laura Harris had made an impression, and it was considered advisable not to goad the "savage" beyond bounds. Meg after awhile was very much left alone.

She was an outcast, and she felt homesick for the London cage from which she had flitted, and which the presence of a friend had cheered. For the first time, also, she realized her ignorance, and with resolute heroism she set herself to learn. She worked with astonishing zeal. At her books and lessons Meg did not feel so lonely. At church and in her walks through the pleasant country lanes the sense of her absolute isolation was lifted. In recreation hours she sat apart from her schoolfellows. There was a yew tree on the outskirts of the playground into which she climbed to read Goldsmith's "Animated Nature." She began its perusal for the sake of the donor; then, gradually, this book of wonder fascinated her. The description it gave of strange, beautiful creatures, of birds especially, enthralled her. She gathered from the pages hints of far-away countries that called to her like a voice. This little town-bred heart was seized with a passionate love of nature and a foolish love of wild flowers. As she formed one of the regiment of girls who tramped, two and two, through the country lanes, the beauty of nature seemed to comfort Meg as if the touch of a reassuring hand were laid upon her heart. She would almost forget, then, that she was an object of mockery or patronage to her fellows. In the beautiful old church she felt nearly happy. "I am out of school," she would say to herself. The voice of the organ took her immensely. It seemed to be a voice talking to God. She liked the clergyman also. He was an old gentleman who appeared to her to be endowed with great benevolence. She thought his sermons marvels of eloquence. When, in answer to her long stare, his eye sometimes rested upon her, she felt immensely distinguished and honored.

The teachers of Moorhouse were as much puzzled concerning Meg as were the girls. She knew so much of some subjects and so little of others. Miss Reeves, after a careful examination of the new pupil's acquirements, declared that Meg might beat the girls of the upper class in knowledge of some parts of history, and in familiarity with some of Shakespeare's plays; while the lower classes might overmaster her in the elements of arithmetic, geography, and other subjects.

Mr. Foster, the arithmetic master, a lank man with a large nose and a long neck, who looked like an innocent vulture, and who had never been known to give a bad mark, contenting himself with feebly rubbing out the mistakes on the slates presented to him, was bewildered by Meg's absolute ignorance of the rules of arithmetic, and by her dependence upon her fingers for counters.

"Miss Beecham is a table-rase, as was the great philosopher Descartes before he began to observe for the sake of his method," said the professor to Miss Reeves, with forefinger uplifted, for Mr. Foster was proud of making little pedantic jokes.

Madame Vallaria, the middle-aged lady who superintended the music of the establishment, teaching piano and singing from morning till night, was divided between admiration for Meg's correct ear and determination to learn, and despair over the stiffness of her fingers and her ignorance of the first elements of music. The signora was hot-tempered; her nerves were jarred by listening to incessant practice.

"No, no, it is impossible! I will not teach you—I will refuse—I will say to Miss Reeves that I cannot!" She sometimes exclaimed, addressing Meg: "Your fingers are like the chop sticks the Chinese do use for eating. You thump—thump—thump! I hear it in my sleep. It ever gives me the nightmare." Sometimes Mme. Vallaria relented and with voluble heartiness would exclaim: "Oh, Povera! your leetle heart is set to learn; you are so courageous; and your ear it is exact, like a machine made to catch the sounds. Yes, I will teach you—you shall learn it yet—the piano—never fear!"

Mr. Eyre, the shy and eminent professor who came down twice a week from London to take classes of history and English literature of younger and elder pupils, would alternately pass from delight to annoyance at Meg's answers. Her indifference to dates appeared to him a sort of moral deficiency—it amounted to contempt. Her power of realizing historical facts and characters in which she took an interest was vivid, as if she had been a spectator of the events described, and had a personal acquaintance with the actors therein. He vowed she spoke of Julius Cæsar as if she knew him, and of his murder as if it had happened yesterday and was the subject of a leader in this morning's Times. He was appalled and puzzled, he exhorted, he raged; but his eye rested expectantly upon Meg when her companions floundered behind, and the dullness of the class was relieved for him by the audacity of her answers.

"You ought to go up to London to see the coronation," he said to her one day when the theme of the lesson was Queen Elizabeth's reign, and Meg surpassed herself in the brilliancy of her descriptive replies and the astounding incorrectness of her dates.

"What coronation?" asked Meg.

"That of Queen Elizabeth."

"But she is dead and buried in Westminster Abbey," Meg rejoined blankly, being dismally dense in apprehending a joke.

"Is she?" replied Mr. Eyre with feigned astonishment, and as was his wont when he bantered his pupils, he set about biting what remained of his nails and scribbled the lessons to be learned in the following week.

"Let her go on! She will go forever and ever backward till she is stopped by the pyramid of Ghizeh!" he remarked another day as Meg placed the date of Cromwell a century too early, and was sending it back another hundred years when she found she was wrong.

Miss Grantley, the English and geography teacher to the younger class, was antagonistically chilly in her treatment of Meg. The child felt she was disliked, and with that precise and unsympathetic teacher her deficiencies came out flagrantly. Signora Vallaria's voluble wailings, Dr. Grey's jokes, did not dispirit Meg as did Miss Grantley's frosty censoriousness.

Meg was solitary, and in her solitude she grew defiant and repellent. Her heart suffered from the atmosphere of repression. As far as outward appearances went she resembled her comrades; she was dressed like her fellow-pupils, her wardrobe having been replenished under Miss Reeves' direction; but inwardly she was not of them. She sat among them like an owl among sparrows.

She observed them. As she had watched the hubbub of the lodging-house, so she now watched the routine of the school. The girls of the first class, tall, elegantly dressed, appeared to her like young goddesses.

Some of those nodded to her kindly as they passed, and she returned the salute awkwardly without a smile.

Among the girls who had tormented her on her first night, a group, headed by Miss Rosamond Pinkett, the cold-eyed, straight-backed, Roman-nosed young lady, kept up an aggressive attitude. It still appeared to Miss Pinkett that a degradation had been inflicted on the school by the introduction of the "savage," and she ignored Meg with contemptuous coldness. This young lady's bosom friend, Gwendoline Lister, the beauty of the school, had a nature addicted to romance. Her mind was like a story-book in which every page contained a thrilling incident of which she was usually the heroine.

The sudden appearance of Meg, in a costume that suggested the dress of a poor tradesman's child, her fierce refusal to betray anything concerning her antecedents except the reiteration that her mother was a lady, fired the beauty's fancy. Meg, she imagined, was the scion of a noble family, stolen by gypsies, found at last, and sent here to be educated.

"Daughter of a ballet-dancer, my dear, you mean," Miss Pinkett said with an icy sniff. "That ridiculous drawing speaks volumes."

The drawing to which Miss Pinkett alluded, and from which the Beauty had evolved her romance, was an attempt made by Meg to repeat from memory that dear fashion plate, which she had given away.

She had rudely drawn a small-mouthed, large-eyed face, the head wreathed with roses, the dress covered with roses. Underneath she had written in Roman characters, "My mother." This drawing had been found in Goldsmith's "Animated Nature," taken out by prying fingers, and had been passed from hand to hand. Where others had found food for mockery, Miss Lister had found food for her imagination.

Meg had come on the scene as Miss Pinkett was in the act of examining the sketch. With a cry she had snatched it out of the enemy's grasp, and, tearing it to bits, she had flung herself from the presence of the girls.

Ursula continued the defense of the stranger, and made advances to Meg, which the child persistently refused.

"Why won't you take my sweets?" Ursula asked once in a piqued tone.

"I don't want them," said Meg with jerky abruptness.

"Why? Is it because you have none to give in return?" demanded Ursula bluntly.

"I don't want them—that is all!" answered Meg.

"It is pride—nothing but pride!" said Ursula, turning away with a displeased gleam of her spectacles.

A few days later an incident happened which showed that Meg was not all indifferent to kindness. The spring had come and decked with lavish waste of blossoms disgraced corners as well as more favored places. It had rimmed with a fringe of velvet wallflower the top of the arid garden wall. The orange and brown blooms spread in the sunlight, swayed in the breeze, attracted the murmuring bees, and sang the praise of spring in delicate wafts of perfume.

"How delicious those wallflowers smell," said Ursula, sniffing the air with head thrown back. "It is a shame they should be unpluckable. I wish I had a handful."

Meg heard the wish as she sat perched on the yew tree. When Ursula turned away she abandoned her leafy throne, and swung herself from one of the branches on to the trellis that covered the wall. It was a high wall, but she climbed it with the precision of a woodland animal, here grasping the trellis, there planting her foot on some bit of projecting masonry. "You'll fall!" cried a chorus of voices. "To climb that wall is absolutely forbidden, Miss Beecham," called out Miss Pinkett's voice. "I will go and tell Miss Grantley," cried Laura Harris, setting off at a run. Meg, undismayed by warnings and threats, pursued her quest.

A moment later Ursula felt a gentle touch on the elbow, and a fragrant bunch of brown blossoms was thrust into her hand.

"Meg, you did not!" she cried with amazed spectacles, gazing at the child, who bore marks of her recent encounter with the perils of the wall.

Meg nodded.

Ursula buried her nose into the flowers with a hesitating expression as Miss Grantley came up, followed by girls.

"Miss Beecham, go indoors at once! You shall stay in this afternoon for this unlady-like and disobedient conduct. Ursula, those flowers must be given up!"

Meg pulls the forbidden flowers.—Page 94.

Meg went indoors without a murmur, and zealously devoted herself to the task set her as expiation of her offense. She took pleasure in its difficulty. She was glad the day was so beautiful, that the room was full of sunshine, and the wandering puffs of wind brought in messages from the odorous sweetness of the day. She was proud of being punished for Ursula's sake. It seemed to put her on a more equal footing, as if repaying her for past kindness.

Another incident that followed shortly after the wall-climbing episode proved that Meg's sense of loyalty survived amid the withering influence of loveless criticisms around her.

Miss Gwendoline Lister, because of her beauty, was a personality in the school. She suffered the penalties of celebrity. Stories were current concerning her. One averred that she had been found dissolved in tears on the discovery of a freckle upon her nose. Another rumor was current that the Beauty spent the afternoon of wet half-holidays locked up in the room she and Miss Pinkett shared in common arranging and dressing her hair in various fashions, enhancing her charms with rouge and powder, and trying on her ball dress.

Perhaps this report arose from the fact of a rouge pot having been found in the school. Some averred it was the property of Miss Lister, others declared its contents had been used by the young ladies who had taken part in a theatrical entertainment given on the occasion of breaking up for the holidays.

Meg, in her isolation, took no interest in the "rouge pot controversy." One afternoon, to her surprise, she was beckoned by Miss Pinkett into the room shared by her and Gwendoline.

The Beauty was standing near the dressing-table, a radiant vision clothed in white, with hair unbound, wreathed with roses, and with roses in the bodice of her dress.

For a moment Meg remained struck dumb with admiration, then came a sudden revolution. In her wide experience of life in the boarding-house she had known an obscure member of the theatrical profession. This little slip of the foot lights, who spent her life in alternate squalor and fairy-like splendor, had on one or two occasions dressed herself up for Meg's benefit. The child had grown to know cheeks bedabbled with paint and eyes outlined with bismuth. The face of Miss Lister brought back this acquaintance of bygone times.

"Well, what do I look like?" said Gwendoline, with her head cocked on one side and her finger-tips caressing the roses in her bodice. "You know, little monkey, you are not to tell."

Miss Pinkett watched the effect on Meg with cold curiosity.

"You look much prettier as you are every day," said Meg.

"Do I look like your mother?"

"My mother!" repeated the child, and she began to tremble.

"I copied the portrait you drew, roses and all," said the Beauty.

"My mother never painted her cheeks; she never put black under her eyes. You are like a Christy minstrel painted pink and white—that's what you are like!" said Meg, with the concentration of fury in her voice. She turned, unlocked the door, and slammed it behind her.

As she emerged out of the room the dressing bell for tea rang, and she encountered a group of girls waiting outside. They cried breathlessly:

"What are they doing inside?"

"Is not Gwendoline dressing up? Does she rouge her cheeks?"

"I saw a bit of a white dress."

"I did—I did! Tell us, Meg—Meg!"

But Meg did not answer. She tore along the passage and up the stairs till she came to a solitary attic. She flung herself down on the floor and hammered the insensate boards with her fists. In her untamed heart she would have wished to wipe the insult from her mother's memory by thus maltreating the painted cheeks of Miss Lister.

When the tea bell rang Meg went downstairs.

"Where are Miss Pinkett and Miss Lister?" asked Miss Reeves, after she had said grace, glancing down the table.

"They have not come down yet from their room, madam," said the attending parlor-maid.

"Miss Lister is dressing up. Miss Beecham was there—she knows," said Laura Harris, who might be relied upon for giving information on the doings of the other girls.

"Miss Beecham knows!" repeated some other voices.

"Miss Lister puts paint on her cheeks," resumed Laura, growing more explicit.

"I hope not!" said Miss Reeves, with an anxious brow, and her eye rested upon Meg.

"I heard it said before by Miss Reeves' young laidees," put in Signora Vallaria, rolling her dark eyes. "Tell, my leetle Meg, what they were doing, the silly young laidees, when they call you in?"

At this moment Miss Pinkett and Gwendoline entered. The Beauty's face was shining with soap.

"What were you doing in your room, young ladies?" asked Miss Reeves gravely.

"I suppose, madam, Miss Beecham has been telling," replied Miss Pinkett.

"No, we are waiting for her answer to the question I have just put to you."

Meg was conscious of every eye being turned upon her—Miss Reeves sternly questioning, Miss Pinkett coldly supercilious, Gwendoline, with pursed lips, imploring. She stood up, her little red lips closed tightly, her heart fiercely divided between a desire for vengeance and a sense of loyalty. After a pause she said:

"They called me into the room to make fun of a portrait of my mother which I had drawn."

A murmur of comical disappointment from the girls round the table, an expression of relief on the faces of the two culprits, greeted this answer.

"It was such an absurd portrait, madam," said Miss Pinkett in an explanatory tone; "a lady suffering from the mumps wearing a wreath of roses."

A titter went round the table.

"Hush!" said Miss Reeves seriously. "It is unkind to laugh at the child. Sit down, young ladies."

"It was awfully good of you, Meg, not to tell about me," said Gwendoline that evening, when she got Meg alone. "I am awfully obliged. I am sorry I offended you. Will you forgive me?"

"No!" said Meg emphatically, turning her back upon the Beauty and walking stiffly away.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SCHOOL ANNUAL.

Ursula had founded the "Moorhouse Annual." The volume appeared every year just before the midsummer holidays. It consisted of poems and stories by the young ladies, copied in Miss Clara Maxton's beautiful copperplate writing, and edited by Ursula.

Ursula was editress, illustrator, and chief contributor. The history of the courtship, squabbles, friendships, and adventures of Mr. Gander and Miss Chilblane, chiefly related in pen-and-ink drawings, with commentaries appended beneath, by Ursula, was a leading feature of the periodical.

The would-be contributors to the annual usually assembled some Saturday afternoon in May, to read aloud their MSS. and submit them to the editorial judgment.

The important Saturday had arrived, and Ursula and her staff were assembled, with Miss Reeves' permission, in the smaller schoolroom. Ursula sat at the head of the table in an impressive armchair; the spectacles astride her retroussé nose seemed critically brilliant.

Meg slunk in, and sat at the window within earshot.

Gwendoline had asked her on entering, MS. in hand, if she was going to read a story. "I am sure you could write a most bewitching story about that beautiful lady," the Beauty had averred.

"No, no, no!" said Meg, retreating into the veranda.

She had crept back in time to hear Laura Harris read her tale. It appeared to be the history of a confectioner, who owned a famous west-end shop, which was in vogue with the fashionable and wealthy. Ladies sat there and feasted. The description of its charms had apparently such an overwhelming attraction for the authoress that she could not prevail on her pen to quit it and pass on with her story. There was a gigantic wedding-cake, with a sugar-almond top, fully a yard high. The cream puffs, the jam tarts, the ices, the chocolates, the sweets were piled on with profusion.

The conclusion of this story was not arrived at.

Ursula rapped the table with her paper-knife.

"Story declined with thanks," she said briefly.

"Why?" asked Laura indignantly.

"Because, notwithstanding the delicious cakes, we consider it in bad taste," replied Ursula, using the editorial "we" with fine effect.

"Miss Grant, have you a story to submit to us for the forthcoming annual?"

Miss Grant had made a hit the year before by her story of "The Ghostly Postman," who knocked in the ordinary way, and sent summons of death by the letter box.

An audible shiver ran through the audience as she now unrolled her MS., and in a deep voice read the title—"The Midnight Yell."

The story told of a beautiful country house, on a moor, in which there was a haunted chamber. Whoever entered that room at night never came out alive. At midnight a yell would ring through the mansion—unearthly, blood curdling. When the chamber was broken into the guest was always found dead, with arms outstretched and eyes starting out of their sockets. Who uttered that midnight yell?—was it the living or the dead? The visitor or the ghost? None could tell. Some said it was an old hag who haunted the chamber, some said it was a beautiful white lady; but it was generally reported to be a murdered queen.

A sigh greeted this story.

"Accepted," said Ursula, in a business-like tone.

"Will it be illustrated?" inquired the authoress anxiously.

"Yes; probably with a spectral donkey braying," said Ursula.

"Oh, no, I cannot allow that!" said the authoress.

"We decline to hold communications about the MSS., refused or accepted," replied Ursula, bringing her paper-knife sharply down upon the table.

"Miss Lister's story," she demanded.

"It is entitled," said Gwendoline in a falsetto voice, "'The Lover's Grave.'" The Beauty proceeded to read how a gypsy with weird, mystic, somber eyes, and serpent-like, coiling, blue-black hair, had scanned the shell-like palm of a lovely Venetian maiden with golden tresses, and warned her with strange fatal mutterings that to her love and death would come hand in hand. Careless of the muttered prophecy, the Venetian damsel with hair like bullion, and clad in a rich violet velvet gown, and with a necklace of pearls clasped about her lily-white throat, set off every morning in her gondola to look for the gallant whom she could love. One day the predicted lover came in another gondola; he was beautiful as Apollo. His mustache was long and silky, his eyes liquid and violet; he had an air of combined tenderness and strength. The gondolas drifted toward each other, impelled by fate. The lady rose impulsively; so did the gentleman. They endeavored to embrace. As they did so, both fell into the water. For awhile they floated on the blue-green flood, smiling seraphically at each other, then they subsided gracefully, and were drowned, and ever after that spot was called "The Lovers' Grave."

"It will make a pretty picture," said Ursula. "I can see the two drowning with that set seraphic smile, as if they liked it."

"Yes," said Gwendoline, who never saw a joke, "it will make a lovely picture."

"I have written a poem," said Miss Blanche Hathers modestly, taking out a roll of paper tied with bows of pink satin ribbon.

A hum of approbation greeted this announcement.

"Go on," said Ursula, with the freezing brevity of the editor.

"The poem is called 'A Lament,' perhaps it might be more appropriately called 'A Deserted Maiden's Prayer.'"

Ursula nodded. Miss Hathers began effectively:

"Oh! star of even
My heart is riven,
Come thou down and shine
In these eyes of mine;
'Twill draw him back."

Ursula, forgetting editorial dignity, completed the couplet, amid giggles and laughter:

"And his cheek I'll smack."

The discomfited poetess folded up her effusion. The next line was:

"On dreamy track,"

and it was only the first verse.

"'Twill draw him back,
On dreamy track."

she repeated in an injured voice.

"Never mind on what track—we must shunt him," said Ursula with decision. "Any more MSS.?" she inquired, scanning the assembled contributors.

There came a rustle of many pages.

Miss Margaret Smith submitted the story of "The First Ball-dress," which had a high moral; it was accepted, and was voted lovely. Miss Sarah Robbins contributed "The Vampire Schoolmistress," an awful tale of a teacher, whose pupils all died mysteriously—"sucked like oranges," Ursula suggested. One young lady gave an account of her trip to Paris, which contained vivid descriptions of bonnets and capes, and some obscure allusions to the galleries.

"My story is entitled 'The Noble Heiress,'" said Miss Pinkett. In a lisping, fine voice the young lady read the story of a wealthy damsel, who lived in a beautiful house, exquisitely furnished.

As Portia was at Belmont, so was this heiress sought in marriage by many suitors. It was said that besides her wealth she possessed "love-powders;" for all who saw her loved her. But she was as sensible as she was rich and beautiful, and she kept her heart in check. It was only when the eldest son of a marquis came forward to woo her that she allowed herself to love. Wealth and nobility, the sensible heiress felt, was the true marriage sung of by poets from all ages. The wedding presents were numerous—the author was lavish in descriptions of the diamonds, the rubies, the emeralds. The wedding-dress was a charming costume, which Miss Pinkett described with much fervor.

Meg, who had sat still all the time with her chin in her hands, like a surly little exile from the circle, looked as if the foolish tales irritated her. Suddenly, in a clear, abrupt voice she said:

"Shall I tell you my story?"

"Your story?" echoed the girls, amazed.

"Yes," said Ursula.

"Do!" exclaimed Gwendoline.

"It is the story of a toad," said Meg.

"Of a toad!" repeated Gwendoline in dismay.

"There was once upon a time a toad," Meg began, breathing heavily—taking no notice of the interruption.

"It was ugly, lonely, and always in danger of being kicked and crushed; but it had splendid eyes, like jewels. At night it liked to crawl out and look up at the beautiful stars. Every one who saw it," Meg went on with more concentration, "looked at it with disgust. The toad used to make its way to the edge of the still water and look at itself, and think 'how they hate me.' It envied the frogs which croaked and could jump, while it could only crawl.

"Down in the water below the ground lived the great mother of all the toads, and this little toad went down to find her, for it wished to ask her why it had ever been born? The mother of all the toads was immensely large. She had bigger and more beautiful eyes than any other toad. They were like soft precious stones, and round each eye was a circle of light like a ring of gold. The little toad sat before her and said:

"'Why have I been born? Why should I be crushed and beaten, and looked at with disgust? Why do the children put out their little red lips at me? They hate and fear me. Sometimes when they see me they step back and go headlong into the water. I have not even power to punish them.'

"And the mother of all the toads did not answer, she only blinked. She showed no sympathy at all, and never looked at the little toad.

"Once the toad thought it would do a kind thing. It lived near a garden, and in it there was a child who had a pet flower, and when the child went away the toad took care of the flower, brought water to it, scratched the earth, and took all the insects away.

"When the child returned the flower was more beautiful than before. But when it saw the toad, it stamped its little foot, crying 'Kill it! kill it!' and the gardener gave the poor toad a kick with his nailed boot on its tender side, and threw it, almost killed, into the water. So the little toad said 'I will never like anybody again, and I will never do a kind thing.'

"Its heart grew wicked." Meg put emphasis on this last word. "It had teeth to bite, it croaked its ugliest, and it had just one longing to see something uglier than itself. One day it saw this thing. It was a pug dog—petted, and fed, and caressed, and wearing a gold collar round its neck. The toad was glad there was something uglier than itself; it frightened the pug dog, and was comforted.

"One day as the little toad was crawling along it heard steps. 'I shall be killed it said,' and it tried to hurry away. But the steps came nearer and nearer. Suddenly the toad felt itself taken up gently, and it saw bending over it the face of a young man, and it was a kind face; and the young man put the little toad down in a sheltered spot, saying 'Remain there, out of harm's way, till I come back.' He went away." Here Meg's voice faltered.

"He did not know that there were dreadful thorns in that spot; but the little toad tried for the sake of that friend not to mind. It remained there, and it was always listening for the young man's steps coming back. That is all," said Meg in abrupt conclusion.

There was a silence.

Then Miss Pinkett said: "What a shocking story!"

"Shocking!" circled round the table.

"Were you the little toad?" asked Laura Harris.

"Yes!" said Meg curtly.

"I like that story," said Ursula, "and I shall draw such a toad."

CHAPTER IX.

DRIFTING AWAY.

It was the eve of the midsummer holidays; the examinations were over. Miss Pinkett had come out victorious in music and geography, Ursula in drawing and artistic needlework. The Beauty had proved to be nowhere in the competition. Meg had taken no prize, but she had been encouraged by kind reports from Signora Vallaria and Mr. Eyre. She had worked incessantly, and some of the teachers had recognized her zeal.

The tension of the past few weeks was relaxed, and Miss Reeves was giving the picnic that she usually organized for her pupils, in the Surrey woods, watered by a branch of the Thames. It was a perfect summer day, broadly golden, benignly calm.

The repast under the trees was over; the girls, tired of their games, sat about in groups discussing plans for the holidays. Meg sat apart. In the midst of the surrounding gayety the loneliness of her heart deepened. She was enduring the tantalizing pangs of picturing the happy hours from which she was excluded.

She heard of the dear little children who would come to the station to welcome these home-comers; of the lawn-tennis parties, the rides, the picnics which awaited them. One girl was going home for the wedding of her sister; another was promised a pony to ride out with her brother George. There were vivid descriptions going on all around her of the charms of holidays. Oh, the delights of not hearing the school-bell of a morning—of awaking at the appointed hour, and being able to turn round cosily for another sleep! All were going home; even the teachers looked forward to meeting relatives and friends. She alone was remaining—she alone of all the school had no home to go to. She rose and wandered away. Her desolate little heart could bear it no more: a bitter sense was growing there that no one cared for her—that if Mr. Standish cared for her he would have written.

Meg walked away, not minding where she went, willing only to be out of earshot of that joyous talk. She presently found herself by the river's bank; and there, moored among the reeds, was the longboat hired for the occasion, in which the girls had rowed each other in parties all the morning.

Ursula had pressed her to join the group of which she was a member, but Meg had refused. It had seemed to the child enough to lie among the ferns, inhaling the delicate, pungent perfumes, feeling the breath of the summer day on her cheek, surrendering herself to the strength and calm of nature's influence.

Meg now stepped into the boat and sat down. It was like being in a cradle, she thought, as the water softly rocked the craft. No one was near. Presently she perceived that the boat was sliding off—softly, softly the shore was receding; the banks and the long reeds were falling back.

Meg watched immobile. Bundles of oars lay at the bottom of the boat; which was also strewn with bunches of meadow-sweet, elder-blossoms, forget-me-nots, and other riverside trophies which the girls had plucked on their travels. Meg sat upright like a startled rabbit, wondering when the boat would stop. She wished that it would never stop—that it would carry her away, away, she knew not whither! She had heard the girls speak of the "weir." What was that? Was it some weird spot?—a strange island, perhaps, inhabited by some of the water-fowl of which she had read?

Then she perceived that the boat had swung itself round; it was drifting down with the current. The river was narrow, and there was not another boat within sight. Without oars, without sails, without guidance, the little craft was making its way, keeping right in the middle of the stream. For a moment Meg could not believe; then joy seized her—she was off on her travels!

Past pale-green willows that hung their branches down into the water, filling it with a twilight of green, sprinkling its surface with leaves as with a goblin fleet; past sunny, silent stretches of woodland and meadows where cows grazed and looked at her with horny heads sharply outlined against the light; past banks full of flowers went Meg. The sun shone for her, the breeze stirred for her, the trees seemed to look at her. She felt like a little river-queen.

As she drifted along, the misery and loneliness at her heart dropped, like the leaves the breeze had shaken from the willows. She, the despised Meg, was free; all nature was her playfellow. From the banks the cuckoo cried like a friendly presence playing at "hide-and-seek" with her. A kingfisher, with a breast like a jewel fashioned in the sky, skimmed past her where the solitude was shadiest. From the forked branches of a willow a water hen, sitting on its nest, peered at her with trustful eyes; a water rat from under the leaf of a water lily eyed her with pleasant sympathy, as if he understood the pleasures of a skiff on a summer day. The fishes leaped and made rippled circles around her.

After awhile the river broadened. She passed boathouses that appeared to stand in the water, their roofs bright with flowers; she drifted along a bank where children were playing. They left their games to watch her. They pointed at her, and Meg lifted herself up that she might be better seen, feeling more than ever like a little river queen. She, the wild, despised Meg, was envied and admired!

Once more the river grew lonely. Presently she thought she heard a distant, drowsy sound; it grew louder; the boat seemed to glide along more quickly. After awhile the sound became a roar, and the boat skimmed along as if it were flying; still the water remained smooth as glass. She fancied she heard voices shouting, but the roar of the water filled her ears till it became a boom. She sat up straight and rigid, and as she flashed past she saw with dreadful clearness the word "Danger" written up in great letters on a post by the riverside. For the first time Meg's heart began to beat. She heard shouts; she turned her head, and again she saw with terrible distinctness the word "Danger" written above the place the boat was making for. The water-line ended there, and she understood the booming was the roar of the river rushing down to a lower level. Her boat would upset and she must drown! Meg shut her eyes. Mr. Standish, the old boarding-house, seemed to rise before her as she speeded along.

Suddenly the boat jerked, struggling like a living creature arrested in full flight.

"Don't move!" shouted a voice; and Meg, quiet as an image, felt the struggling boat slowly turned round; a head showed above the water; a muscular arm, bare to the elbow, a figure clad in white flannels, swimming low and strong, were beside her.

It had been accomplished in one moment's time. The boat was being now pushed in the direction of a bank, on which stood a watching group of young men, clad, like her rescuer, in white flannels and loose, bright-colored jackets. One of these got into the water, and catching the prow of the boat, pulled it in with one vigorous sweep. The keel grazed the bottom of the river; the young men lifted Meg and set her on shore.

"Well, if ever a little girl escaped drowning you have!" said her rescuer, giving himself a shake.

Meg was silent as she realized that she had been saved from drowning in the whirl and foam of roaring water. The young men looked at her with kind, smiling glances—she was surrounded with laughing eyes and gleaming teeth. They plied her with questions of "Who was she?" "What was her name?" "Where did she come from?" "Had she been frightened?"

She explained how she had got into the boat and she had drifted away. No, she had not been frightened—only when she saw the word "Danger" she had begun to be afraid.

Her rescuers voted that she was a heroine.

The young men moved away a few steps and held a consultation; one, who had an eyeglass stuck in his eye and a pipe in his mouth, came forward.

"Get into the boat, Meg, and we will all row you back. You will point out the place you came from when we approach it."

He handed Meg in, and the young fellows vied with each other to pay her attention. One put a cushion at her back, another a plank to her feet. "Meg," they vowed, "must be rowed back in triumph."

They stepped into the boat, four took oars. Another sat behind Meg, ropes in hand. Presently they lit their pipes. Meg sat back in state. How kind they were! They were not cross, as girls mostly were; they did not mock or tease her; they did not say a word of what some of the girls called chaff. She watched with amazement all their pipes going puff, puff, puff. She liked them because they did not talk much. They reminded her of Mr. Standish. When their eyes caught hers they gave her a smile. How strong they were! She watched their muscular arms and hands sweeping the water with their oars, the rhythmic movement of their swaying bodies.

No Greek maiden delivered from peril by a group of demi-gods ever felt more lost in dreamy wonder and gratitude than did Meg, rowed up the river by her rescuers. Her eyes rested oftenest on the one who had saved her—he seemed to her the most magnificent member of this gallant crew. He had laughing, twinkling eyes, thick, short, curly hair, silky mustache no bigger than an eyebrow. It occurred to her that she had not thanked him for saving her life. She turned over in her mind what was the proper thing to say. She tried to recollect what persons in story-books said to the saviours of their lives, but she could not remember; she pondered, but the words of gratitude would not come. At last she exclaimed abruptly:

"You saved my life—and—and—I am very much obliged to you."

A peal of laughter taken up by all the group greeted this speech. The laughter was so jovial and good-natured that Meg felt at her ease. It seemed to say: "What nonsense! Don't thank me. It was nothing."

Then they began to question her again: "Was she afraid of meeting her schoolmistress? Would she be scolded?"

Meg admitted the possibility of being scolded. Her rescuers vowed that they would plead for her. They would extract a promise from the schoolmistress not to punish her. Meg must not be scolded; Meg must be welcomed home like the prodigal returning.

"There!" exclaimed Meg dejectedly, pointing to a group of girls and teachers looking up and down the river. She enjoyed the amazement of the spectators as from the bank they watched her triumphant return. With a sweep of the oars the boat came alongside the shore. Miss Reeves stepped forward.

"You must have been frightened, madam, at this young lady's disappearance," said Meg's rescuer, jumping on shore.

Meg allowed herself to be helped out like a princess by the oarsmen.

"We had not long missed the child," replied Miss Reeves. "We were startled when we discovered that the boat was gone. She ought not to have gone alone—it was very thoughtless."

"The boat drifted away with her—it nearly carried her down the weir," said the spokesman. "She was very courageous."

Meg felt herself pleaded for, and listened, motionless.

"You saved her life?" said Miss Reeves.

"I was able, by swimming out in time, to turn the boat's head," replied the young man lightly. "She behaved with great pluck."

"I am most grateful, and I shall acquaint her guardians," said Miss Reeves.

"No, no—pray don't!" replied the young man; and his comrades echoed his words. "Only," he added with a merry twinkle, "do not let Miss Meg be scolded! She is so spirited, so courageous—she ought to have a medal for steadiness of nerves."

Miss Reeves hesitated, then she said smiling: "She will not be scolded."

The announcement was received with approbation, the young men shook hands with Meg, and lifting their white caps to Miss Reeves and the schoolgirls, turned away.

Meg watched their figures retreating through the trees; and when they vanished she felt the loneliness creep over her again.

CHAPTER X.

REBELLION.

The second week of the holidays had come. For close upon a fortnight Meg had been alone with Miss Grantley. The self-centered chilliness of the English teacher deepened the solitary child's sense of isolation. Miss Grantley affected her like the embodied quintessence of censure upon all her moods and actions.

This lady always made Meg feel in the wrong. An increased brusqueness of gesture, a more rigid set of the defiant lips, expressed the protest of the wild little soul.

During the first week of her holidays she had a companion in her solitude. It was a battered doll, with rough hair and faded cheeks. It looked deserted. Rosamund Seely, a kind-hearted child, as a parting gift, had offered it to Meg on receiving the present of a beautiful new doll. "Poor Meg, you are going to be left alone. There's a dollie for you," the child had said, in transferring the belated toy; and Meg's desolate soul had been touched by the words.

For a week she had loyally carried the plaything about with her; she had perched it on a branch of the yew tree when she sat on her leafy throne; she had got to feel so lonely that she sometimes talked to it, and felt toward it as toward a companion, bidding her answer when she spoke. After awhile that constant comrade, sitting opposite to her with its grimy cheeks, its faded and ragged finery, became in its look of abandonment an emblem to Meg of herself. She grew to hate the sight of the doll; but still she would not part with it for the sake of the donor, and she thrust it in a corner of the shelf assigned to her in the dormitory.

The loneliness chilled the marrow of the child's life. The object ever in view, the repellent attitude toward her comrades, the consciousness that her replies were waited for and sometimes admired, had kept up Meg's spirit. It flagged in the length, the languor, the emptiness of those July days. There was nothing to be done but to sit up in the tree, to read, to think, and remember. As the hare seeks its form, so Meg's thoughts returned to the home where she had spent her childhood. She was always seeing that place on the stairs from which she had watched the coming and going of her only friend during those neglected years. Why did he not write to her? Why? Her lonely heart asked itself this question with insistence. He had promised to write to her, he was true, he never told a falsehood. Why did he not write? Then the conviction was borne in upon her that a letter was waiting for her at Mrs. Browne's house. Mr. Standish thought the landlady would forward it, but perhaps the stern white-haired gentleman, who told her she must forget her childhood and every one she had then met, would withhold her address from Mrs. Browne. The conviction haunted Meg. If she could but get to London she would make her way to Mrs. Browne and get that letter. Meg would lie awake, thinking of this, "If she could but get to London." The contemplation was still vague in her mind. It wanted something to condense it into a resolution, and that something came.

One late afternoon Meg sat at tea with Miss Grantley. She was always awkward under this lady's censorious glance. Stretching her hand for the bread and butter she upset her cup of milk on the teacher's dress. Miss Grantley had on her best mauve silk. She was going out to supper with a friend. As she wiped the stain from her draperies she looked icily at Meg.

"Your manners are deplorable, Miss Beecham. I do not wonder that your companions shun you. It must be most painful for young ladies to be associated with one who so richly deserves her nickname of the 'savage.'"

"I am not a savage," said Meg shortly.

"Do not answer me. Your untamed nature, which neither religion nor culture has softened, does not possess the very rudiments of civilized society. You shame this establishment. I had meant to take you out this evening."

"I would not have gone," retorted Meg, her eyes brilliant with indignation.

"Impudent little thing! Don't venture to talk to me like that!" and forgetting herself, Miss Grantley rose and gave a slap with the back of her hand on Meg's ear.

A fit of fury seized the child. She was once more the old wild Meg. She rushed into the garden, running blindly she knew not whither. A couple of slugs were crawling across her path. With an impulse of revenge she picked them up, and hurrying to Miss Grantley's room, hid them in the bonnet that lay on the bed ready to be put on.

From the dormitory Meg listened. She heard Miss Grantley go in, and when two short shrieks reached her ear she shook with impish laughter The next moment Miss Grantley appeared on the threshold.

"I know you did this," she said.

"I did," replied Meg.

"You might have given me my death. I might have had a fit. Miss Reeves comes home to-morrow, and the first thing I will do on her return is to report you to her. Meanwhile, you shall not leave this room."

Miss Grantley left, and Meg heard the key turn in the lock.

She was locked in.

A rush of passion swept over Meg as she realized that she was a captive. For a moment she stood stock still, thinking of all the terrible things Miss Grantley had said, realizing the bankruptcy of her little peace. She saw herself brought up solemnly before Miss Reeves, who appeared to her to live against a kind of ethereal background. A touch of fear chilled her courageous spirit. The silence of the school, the empty dormitory, deepened the impression of reprobation cast upon her. She felt herself disowned by a law-abiding community. Suddenly an idea came which held her breath in suspense—she would run away! She would go to London. There was a finger post on the highroad they sometimes passed in their walk which pointed to London. She would get out and follow that road, and make her way to Mrs. Browne. The immensity of the resolve overcame Meg for a moment. She walked restlessly up and down the room. Then, with shaking hands, she began to pack up her treasures. A spasm of excitement held her lips rigid as she set about collecting what she would take with her.

Goldsmith's "Animated Nature," the "Stories from the History of England," and "Cinderella," would go into one parcel with the little writing-case. She had still the brown paper and the bit of cord that had held them at her coming. The silver pencil-case and the roll of articles she resolved to carry inside the bodice of her dress. The single threepenny-piece with a hole through it which she possessed, a present from Mrs. Browne, she put into her pocket to serve in case of emergencies.

She would take nothing more with her.

As Meg was tying up her books she caught sight of the doll, with its demoralized, abandoned air, seeming to be watching her. With a movement of sudden, unaccountable anger she took it up and threw it to the furthest corner of the room.

Her preparations made, Meg began to turn over in her mind means of escape. She set about calculating the chances like a little general. She looked out of the window. The door being locked, this was her single means of exit. The porch stood right under the center dormitory window, the wall stretched sheer and blank between.

Meg was gazing down with neck craned to discover if the wall contained any chinks or irregularities that might serve as stepping-stones, when the door opened, and Rachel the housemaid entered, bringing Meg's supper on a tray.

Meg perceived that besides a liberal amount of bread and butter there was a large slice of currant cake.

Rachel was a conscientious and sullen young woman, who executed orders and delivered messages with the exactitude of a sundial and the surliness of a bulldog. She laid the tray sternly down.

"Cook sends her duty, miss, and this bit of cake which she made for the kitchen. She hopes you'll accept it."

"Thank cook kindly, and say I am much obliged," replied Meg with alacrity, recognizing the value of this contribution to her commissariat. The offering appeared to her in the light of a good omen.

Rachel received Meg's thanks in gruff silence, and departed, deliberately locking the door behind her.

Meg drank the tumbler of milk, but abstained from touching the provisions. She took a page of newspaper lining one of the drawers and carefully packed the cake and bread and butter, fastening this smaller parcel to the larger one of books.

Then again she returned to her meditations and calculations as to her mode of escape. If she had but a stout rope with which to swing herself down!

Then suddenly she remembered stories of hairbreadth escapes from fires, recounted to her by Mr. Standish, effected by the aid of a ladder made of sheets and blankets knotted together.

The materials were at hand with which to attain her freedom. Meg's mind was made up. As soon as she was safe from interruption: when Miss Grantley had returned and the household had retired to rest, she would begin making a ladder of sheets.

She determined not to go to bed, but to sit up till daybreak, and at the first streak of dawn scale the wall and escape.

Then she remembered that it would be probable that Miss Grantley would conform to the habit of the school, and make her round over the various rooms. At this thought Meg swiftly set about obliterating every trace of disorder from the dormitory. She stowed her parcel out of sight, and drew the curtains, and began to undress.

She was not yet in bed when she heard steps coming up the garden path and voices bidding each other good-night.

A few moments later the key of her door was turned, a step entered, and Meg heard the rustle of a silk dress. Miss Grantley was making her rounds. Meg appeared to be profoundly asleep; she was conscious of candle-light directed upon her face, but her eyelids did not quiver.

Miss Grantley stole out of the dormitory. Meg listened for the click of the key turned again upon her, but this time Miss Grantley contented herself with closing the door.

Meg could not believe her ears. She got out of bed, and by the moonlight she examined the lock. No, the second bolt was not drawn; the key was not turned. There was no necessity to make a ladder of bedclothes, no need to have recourse to this perilous mode of escape. This difficulty removed seemed like another good omen, an assurance of success to Meg.

She felt as if some guardian angel child were directing her project.

Before returning to bed, and when by the perfect silence she judged that all the household was asleep, she softly drew back the curtains from the windows. Then she lay down, determined to keep awake.

She would not go to sleep; she struggled to keep slumber at bay. She sat up when she felt drowsiness overtake her; unconsciously she slipped off into a doze. She had a dream, rather the sketch of a dream. She had a glimpse of a road—she was walking. She started up frightened, got out of bed, rubbed her eyes, plunged her face into water; she was wide awake now. Then she lay down again; unaware she dropped asleep.

CHAPTER XI.

AWAY.

The day had shot a golden arrow across the uncurtained window of the dormitory when Meg awoke. The sense of something to be done confusedly urged itself upon her mind, and she jumped out of bed. In a flash she remembered everything, and with trembling trepidation she asked herself was she late? Were the servants stirring? The profound silence in the house reassured her. Outside she saw the sky saffron and rose behind the trees, and she heard the birds singing their matins. Meg began to dress rapidly. She was careful in her speed. She was going on a long journey on foot, and she must not look like a little tramp.

Having completed her toilette she took up her parcel and softly opened the door. Her nerves were tense with excitement, and a restrained trembling shook her from head to foot. How still it was! She had a strange fancy; the silence seemed as though some unseen presence was there listening and watching. The shutters were closed everywhere; only a gleam of light flickered through the skylight on the lobby. If she stumbled she would wake some of the inmates; she kept thinking as she stole down. Once she nearly lost her footing. She fancied she had come to the last step of a flight of stairs when two or three still remained to descend. Had she not caught herself up in time she would have fallen, and, weighted as she was, the clatter would have been heard through the house.

As she crossed the hall she knocked up against something which fell with a muffled sound, that in the gulf of silence came like a boom. Meg listened. She heard the furtive clicking of a door above. She waited motionless. It was succeeded by no sound of footsteps, and she concluded it was the creaking of an unclosed door. Then she resumed her progress. She groped her way down to the kitchen—she knew there was no possibility of letting herself out by the hall door—it was dark there, and she knocked her foot against a chair and hurt herself. But she did not mind the pain. All her capabilities of feeling were strained in listening. Had she been heard? The silence still lay like a spell over the house. She shut the door that isolated the downstairs premises and she felt safer.

All depended still upon the caution of her movements, as she turned the key and unbarred the bolts of the door of the servants' exit. With determined quiet the deft brown hands proceeded upon their task when another danger met Meg. Pilot began to bark outside. His kennel was close to the kitchen door, and the furtive sounds had caught his ear and roused his suspicions. Every bark grew louder, and he growled savagely. Meg controlled the trembling that seized her, and the next movement opened the door and encountered the dog. Pilot was reputed dangerous by the schoolgirls, but Meg had no fear. In her isolation she had made friends with the mastiff. At sight of the little figure with hand uplifted to enjoin silence, Pilot paused in the spring he was crouching to make, and stopped barking.

"Hush, Pilot," whispered Meg in a concentrated voice; "don't bark, not on any account, Pilot! I am running away because I am miserable. Good-by, old Pilot!"

Pilot looked at Meg with questioning eyes, debating the reasonableness of her speech. He apparently hesitated to commend the step she was taking, for he did not return her greeting with any demonstration, but remained with head erect and pricked ears surveying her, and let her go in silence.

Meg went round to the kitchen-garden. She had decided to escape that way. The wall was covered with a trellis-work on which fruit was trained. Meg threw her parcel lightly over and began to clamber. She heard the unripe plums fall as she climbed with a sure-footedness that was one of her claims to the title of "savage" bestowed upon her by her schoolmates. With the agility of a squirrel she swung herself over and dropped among the nettles that grew at the base of the wall.

She sprang to her feet, picked up her parcel, conscious of one dominant emotion only—she was out of Moorhouse; she was free! Like a bird winging its way to more genial climes Meg dashed forward.

Across two fields at the back of the house, the bright road lay before her; her escape was made. Not a soul was up, and forgetting that she should economize her strength she ran gladly along, when suddenly an object arrested her eyes and riveted her to the spot. There, at the stile, facing the field, the path through which issued on to the highroad, stood a figure. The face was turned away, but Meg recognized that straight back, that dark dress with austere folds, that severe straw bonnet. It was Miss Grantley.

Was it some waking nightmare, an illusion of frightened fancy? Meg remembered the furtive click of the door. Could her escape have been discovered, and the mistress be lying in wait for her? With desperate resolve, after a moment, Meg determined to chance it. She would creep beside the hedge that led round the stile, and once on the other side she would trust to fortune and to her heels to escape pursuit. She began softly to move; a spray of woodbine caught her skirt—she disentangled it with trembling fingers; a puddle barred the way; she prepared to leap over it, watching that figure with terror. Something in its stillness, its stiffness, and its bent head frightened her. She thought she would call out and speak to it. As she hesitated the figure turned round, and Meg saw, not Miss Grantley, but a stranger whom she had seen at church and admired for her young and peaceful countenance. The lady was holding carefully something lying in her hollowed hand. Perceiving Meg she beckoned. The coil of fear about Meg's heart loosened, and she breathed again.

"Look at this poor chick!" said the stranger. "It has dropped from the nest. See how the mother is hovering round. Poor mother, we will not hurt your little one. God takes care of the fallen nestlings."

"Shall I put it back into the nest?" said Meg impulsively, feeling generous under the impression of that great relief.

"Can you climb?" said the stranger.

For answer Meg deposited her parcel and climbed up into the tree, then stretching out her hand she took the little bird tenderly, and in a moment she had softly dropped it back into the nest.

"That was a good action," said the lady, as she came down again, looking kindly at her. "I thought I was the only one out of doors—it is not yet five o'clock; but you have taken the conceit out of me. This is holiday time. Is that the way you take your holidays, by going out to walk at sunrise?"

Meg nodded. She was eager to dismiss the stranger; but still the lady dallied, looking kindly at her.

"There is a little nosegay; I picked it as I went out. I give it to you. Good-by!"

She took some flowers from her belt.

"Good-by," said Meg, with cordiality.

The stranger nodded again, and turning round walked away with swift and even steps.

Meg loitered a moment watching her, then she clambered over the stile and was off.

She sped along until she reached the highroad. She turned Londonward, not slackening her pace. Not a living soul was within sight or hearing. She had the road to herself. The sun was behind her. Her shadow stretched thin and long before her. It looked like her own ghost gliding in front of her and leading her on. Meg did not look about her, but she was conscious of a universal shining around her, of jocund shadows about her feet, of birds twittering, and delicate perfumes stirring through the breeze that blew so pure and fresh that it seemed to come from heaven's gate. She ran until she could run no more, then skirting the fields she walked quickly along. She thought it was another good omen that the day of her flight should be so brave and gladsome. Was nature rejoicing with her because she was hurrying to the place where she would hear news of the only friend she had in the world?

The hedges sparkled with dew; every bush and brake was hung with sheeny fragments of hoary silver that turned to gold in the sunlight. For her every blade of grass and little flower glistened with a limpid coronal. A thrush sang aloft in a tree; Meg thought it sang for her. After awhile she met a few laborers, but they took no notice of her. Their eyes were fixed on the ground.

As Meg walked along the assurance that a letter was awaiting her grew in intensity. She had heard that by steady walking London could be reached in six hours, seven at most. It was not five o'clock when she started. She would be in London by noon. She saw herself already entering the big city, asking her way to Queen Street; she would make straight for number 22 and ring the bell. Perhaps a strange servant would answer it; perhaps it would be Mrs. Browne herself. What a surprise, what exclamations, if it were the landlady who answered the door! But she would not reply to any questions until she had got her letter. "What letter?" "The letter that came for me with a foreign stamp," she would answer. "Ah, yes! it had come. How had she known it had come? There it was;" and she would take it to her attic, and sitting by the window she would read and read it till she knew every word of it by heart.

Meg passed a village. The people were astir in the streets, the shops were open. Everything sparkled in the sunshine and cast a blue shadow. A baby was crawling on all-fours, its little blue shadow by its side. A woman in the doorway with bare arms akimbo was chatting to a friend. Some geese were waddling down, moving spots of incomparable whiteness. A cart full of hay was standing in the glare of that morning sun. A red-armed girl was milking a patient cow, and there came the pleasant sound of the milk as it rushed into the pail. It was half-past eight by the church clock, the face of which was a blob of brightness. Miss Grantley and the servants had discovered her flight by this time. Perhaps they guessed that she was going toward London; perhaps that strange lady would tell! Meg at this thought left the road for the fields, and walked on the other side of the hedge. She tried to walk quicker to avoid pursuit; but all at once she began to feel as if she could not take another step. She was so tired. She was weak also from hunger. She must sit down and eat.

She had entered a meadow bordered at the further end by a stream. She crossed the grassy stretch, took off her shoes and stockings, and waded ankle-deep into the water. On the other side a little wood cast its shade. She would sit and take her pleasant rest there. The touch of the cool running water was delightful to her burning feet. She knelt on the opposite bank and bathed her hands and face. Then she sat down under a tree. It was delicious to rest; it was enough for a moment to feel how tired she was, to lean back and enjoy the support of that great trunk, and the shade of those leafy branches. No queen ever sat on a throne more restful, nor under a more dainty canopy. She took out the bread and butter—she would not touch the cake yet—and began to eat. She ate slowly. Her repast was a banquet. It tasted of all the penetrating sweet perfumes about her; of the honey-laden breeze, of the fruity sunshine.

When it was over Meg thought it would be pleasant to lie down and sleep. Then she rebuked herself. She had no time for sleep, she must get on to London. She had no time to waste; still she dallied. Nature had spread a couch of dried aromatic leaves for her, perfumed with sweet small flowers, guarded by a green barrier of bushes, shaded with a curtain of leaves. The soothing stillness of nature crooned to her a wordless lullaby. Meg stretched herself under the tree, drowsiness overcame her. She thought of the little bird that had fallen from its nest. Was she like that little bird which had dropped from its home of twigs? But she said to herself, "I put it back there."

Meg had a dream. The black slug had grown to an immense size, with its horns out. Its face seemed to grow like Miss Grantley's. Then it seemed to her that hostile inimical presences were around her, muttering. She woke; where was she? Who were around her? Brown eyes gazed down upon her from every side, warm breathings passed across her face, wide pink nostrils inquisitively moved up and down.

A forest of light-tipped horns surrounded her.

Meg started up. At the sudden movement the creatures jerked backward and took flight. She heard the clatter of hoofs; then pausing and huddling together, they turned and looked at her from a distance. Meg gazed back at them. She laughed; these woodland gossips were heifers—five heifers. She called to them, but they would not come. When she got up to approach them they scampered off.

CHAPTER XII.

AN ACQUAINTANCE BY THE WAY.

Meg decided that time for luncheon had come. The shadows lay long beside the trees and marked afternoon. She felt so rested as she blithely ate the piece of plum-cake saved from last night's supper that it seemed to her that she could walk all the way. It was a generous slice, and she threw crumbs for the birds, which flew down from the surrounding wood and became her guests.

Meg would have gladly dallied awhile, but time was pressing. She must get to London to-night. Taking off her shoes and stockings once more she crossed the stream, pausing a moment to enjoy the sense of the running water against her bare ankles. Then she determinedly resumed shoes and stockings, and after bathing her hands and face she turned to go on her way.

The road lay through hedges full of sweet-smelling eglantine and wild rose which stirred with every gust. As Meg trudged along she looked at the marks in the sand left by the feet which had come and gone across it that day. They made a confused pattern, through which here and there a footprint came out distinctly. There was one of a big nailed shoe that recurred with a sort of plodding regularity, and there was another of a dainty high-heeled boot that seemed to speed gayly along. There was a clumsy sprawling mark of a woman's foot that suggested slatternly shodding, and by its side that of a child's naked foot. Meg wondered if these were a mother and child, beggars going up to London. Presently another footmark attracted her attention. It was that of a single nailed boot, attended by what looked like the mark of one toe resting on the ground, surmounted by another mark. Together these two prints seemed to make a sign of admiration in the sand. Meg puzzled over this strange footmark till she forgot all the others. It fascinated her; preceding her like a cheery mystery. After a while the trace vanished. Meg watched for it; but it had gone, and with it the road seemed to her to have lost some of its interest. Presently she was startled by a "thump, thump" behind her. She felt a little startled, and she turned round to see who was coming. It was a lad swinging himself actively along on a high crutch. He soon overtook Meg, and as he passed he gave her a sidelong glance and touched his hat. He had a pleasant plain face, and bright brown eyes. She noticed that as he went along he left on the road that double mark that had such a quaint resemblance to a point of admiration.

Meg had returned his salute with a nod, which was not wanting in cordiality although it was somewhat stiff. This cripple seemed to her an acquaintance.

"Nice day, miss!" said the boy.

Meg nodded again.

"Going this way, miss?" continued the cripple.

"Yes," Meg replied, in a tone of embarrassed coolness, which was not, however, discouraging to conversation.

"Going far, miss?"

"Going to London," said Meg.

The cripple looked at her with evident admiration.

"Are you going to London?" asked Meg.

"No," replied the lad, "I'm going part of the way."

Meg did not like to press the question further, and the resources of conversation seemed exhausted.

"You see," said the boy after a pause, "I'm going to earn my livin' and the livin' of my mither and the little chap."

Meg looked at her companion with some surprise.

"I'm agoing to where I can earn thirteen pence a day; there's where I'm going. What I want is, they may want for nothink off there," and the boy, with a jerk of his chin, indicated a backward direction.

Meg felt curious to know how this crippled boy earned a living, but she did not like to inquire. So she said, with vague encouragement to further confidence, "You love them very much?"

"I love 'em," assented the cripple in a guarded tone. After a pause he continued, with more frankness, "I'm uncommon fond of the little chap. Mither can't earn enough, so he depends upon me, like. Now, how old do you think I am?" He straightened himself for her inspection, and leaned upon his crutch with the air of a soldier on parade.

Meg hesitated. The boy had a quaint, plucky face, childlike in line, and yet old by its expression of sagacity and caution. His arms and hands were well developed; one shriveled leg hung helpless at some distance from the ground. He seemed of no age and no distinct size.

"I cannot guess," said Meg. "I am eleven and a half," she added, with a generosity of confidence that invited a magnanimous return.

"I am fourteen come next March," said the boy. "Now you think I can't do nothink because of that ere leg." He glanced with some contempt down the maimed limb. "You thinks because I can't put my foot on the ground I can't do nothink. I can do everythink." The cripple turned with a swagger, and the children resumed their walk.

"I once punched a lad—he was older than me—who was worriting the little chap."

"You did?" said Meg admiringly.

"I did. He was striking the little chap in the face; and I comes upon him, and with my fist I gives him a blow, and before he can look up I hits him another, and when he knocks my crutch down I fastens upon him—I drags him down, that's what I does."

"You did right!" cried Meg.

"And I just gives it to him till he lies quiet as a lamb. And says I to him, 'If ye do it again I'll serves ye the likes again,' that what I says," concluded the cripple, marching along with a triumphant "thump, thump," of his crutch.

"I am glad you did it," said Meg, with a flush on her cheek and approval in her eye.

"That's what I does," repeated the cripple, with another swagger of his pendant body.

Meg began to feel a great respect for this cripple, who seemed to her to have the spirit of a lion.

"How are you going to earn money?" she asked, feeling an admiring friendship now justified the question.

The cripple, after a cautious moment, replied:

"Blacking boots."

"Oh!" said Meg, a little disconcerted.

"Faither was a dustman. I'd raither be a dustman than anythink. Ye've a cart, and there ye sits, and ye comes down only to clean away the rubbish; and sometimes ye find an elegant teaspoon, and ye may find a ring. Faither once found a gold ring with three red stones in it that shine. There's nothink like being a dustman," said the boy, with an air of one taking a survey of all the learned professions. "I'd be a dustman, but because of that ere leg. To be a dustman you must be hale in all yer limbs, ye must; so a lady comes round and says I'm to be a bootblack. She gives me brushes and a board and a pot of blacking, and I sets to; and I can make boots shine as will make your eyes blink. Now your boots," with a downward glance at Meg's feet, "are uncommon dusty—I'll black 'em for you."

Meg hesitated; but the cripple had already unstrapped the parcel swung on his back, taken from it a brush, a pot of blacking, and a board, and was down on one knee before her.

Meg could not refuse. She placed first one foot then the other on the board, and brush, brush went the active hands.

Meanwhile a big struggle was going on within Meg. She had no money but that threepenny-piece. Ought she to give it to the lad for blacking her boots? She put her hand into her pocket and turned the small silver piece about.

It was all that stood between her and penury. Still she could not accept a service without paying for it from this cripple, who was earning money for the "little chap."

"There!" said the boy rising, putting up his traps with an air of fine indifference to the effect produced by his action upon Meg's boots.

"I am very much obliged," said Meg hesitatingly; "and here is threepence."

"I don't want yer money," replied the boy with an emphatic jerk of his head. "Keep it; ye'll want it yerself."

Meg's admiration for her companion increased. She gazed down on her boots. "They're splendid," she said fervently; "I never thought boots could shine like that!"

"Well, I thinks as no one can beat me at blacking," said the cripple, accepting the compliment. "It's my notions as when the sloppy weather comes I'll make two shillings a day. But it's not a bootblack I'll remain."

"What will you become?" asked Meg.

"I do not mind telling you," replied the cripple with cautious slowness. "I'm going to be a joiner. Ye thinks as I can't. Ye thinks there's too much agin me. Why, everythink was agin me earning money. First that school-board, that was agin me. It wanted to set me all astray, spending time learning figures and spellin'; but I conquered the school-board. I gets too old for that after a bit. Then when I'm told by the lady of this situation in Weybridge to black boots every morning, there's fifty miles for me to get over; and here's the cripple boy agin, two miles from Weybridge!"

The lad gave a chuckle, a jerk of his head, and a thump of his crutch.

"You've walked fifty miles!" said Meg, with the homage of round-eyed surprise.

"Fifty miles," repeated the boy. "Then a friend o' mine is a carpenter. He would not trust me with a tool two years agone; and now I can plane and drive nails with the best of them. I had no money to buy a box of tools. I'm going to work for it with the boots. All I wants is the sloppy weather, and a spell of it, and that's enough for me."

Meg's admiration overflowed her pent-up heart, and moved her to confide in this cripple and ask his advice. She had not spoken to him of her schoolfellows, or of the object that had impelled her flight.

"Suppose," she began, "some one had been very kind to you, very good, would you not run away from people who were unkind to you, and laughed at you, and despised you?"

"No, I would stay to conquer them," said the cripple, stamping his crutch.

"How would you conquer them?" said Meg.

"I'd wear 'em out," said the lad. "Spite can't stand pluck; that's what I've found out. I'd give 'em a laugh, and if they pushed me hard I'd give 'em a slip of my crutch."

Meg was silent awhile with appreciation of such courage. Then she said:

"But suppose you felt sure there was a letter waiting for you, would you not go to get it?"

"Depends upon that ere letter," replied the cripple with circumspection. "If it was to tell me what to do to better myself I'd go and fetch it were it at the other end of the country."

"But," said Meg, with a quivering voice, letting out the secret fear at her heart, "suppose there was no letter waiting for you when you got to the place?"

"I'd go and look for the one as should ha' written it everywhere. I'd not give over till I found him," said the cripple.

"You would!" said Meg.

"I would!" repeated the boy.

"I wish you were going all the way to London," said Meg.

"To take care of you?" asked the lad. "Wish I could, but I can't, miss. I have the kid and the mistress to think of. It's not so far; to-morrow you'll get there."

"To-morrow!" repeated Meg, aghast.

"It's getting late," said the boy, "ye can't walk in the night. Now, what I say is, if ye find a barn, creep in there and lie in the straw; but if ye can get a hayrick and cover yerself all up to yer head, that's fit for a king—better than a bed. I've slept in 'em, so I ought to know."

Meg could not speak from consternation; the prospect for a moment overwhelmed her.

"Perhaps ye'll meet a cart, and the driver will give ye a lift. My faither once gave a lift in his cart to a little girl going toward London," the cripple suggested.

"I wish I could meet some one who would drive me," said Meg in faltering accents.

"If ye're frightened ye'll never find the person as was good to you," the lad replied rousingly.

"You were not frightened at night, all alone?" asked Meg.

"I'm frightened of nothink," said the lad; "but ye're a little lady, so that makes a difference."

Meg asked herself if her companion's shriveled leg did not make up for the disadvantages of sex, and she trudged along, resolved not to give in, but she wished she did not begin to feel so hungry again.

Presently they came to a fingerpost.

"What's written up there?" said the cripple.

"Can't you see?" asked Meg, astonished.

"I can't read," said the boy.

"Oh!" exclaimed Meg, whose admiration received a great shock.

"I'm ignorant," replied the boy, no whit disconcerted. "I'll conquer that, too. I conquered that school-board because I wanted to earn. I'll conquer ignorance; it's as bad as the school-board."

Meg's admiration revived.

"Weybridge is written on that side," she said.

"That's my way, then," said the cripple. "Good-by to ye, miss. I hope ye'll get all right. Don't forget the barn, or the hayrick if ye can get one."

"Good-by," said Meg, wishing to shake hands, yet hesitating.

The boy touched his hat and set off on his way.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE OLD GENTLEMAN AGAIN.

Meg listened to the thump, thump of the little crutch going off into the dusk, and to the sound of merry whistling, and she turned to pursue her way. The thought of that small lad with his crooked leg and his great courage roused her spirit. No obstacle now appeared too great to overcome, no road too long to walk in order to achieve her object; and she trudged bravely along.

She was very hungry. Her feet were beginning to ache again; but she was not going to stop yet; nothing would induce her to do this; so long as she could hold out she would walk. She would then look out for a proper resting-place in which to spend the night, and set off on her journey in the early morning. She tried to distract her mind by weighing the merits of sleeping up in a tree, or down on the ground, or in a haystack; but her thoughts would fix themselves upon nothing but upon something to eat and drink. She passed a village where all the cottagers seemed to be at their supper. Meg trudged valorously along, neither looking to right or left. Still she debated whether the time had come for breaking into that threepenny-piece. She looked at the matter all round. It stood between her and starvation. Until she reached Mrs. Browne's house she had nothing else to count upon.

Was she hungry enough yet? Had supper-time come? A whiff of the perfume of buns and hot loaves from a wayside shop decided the question. She felt weak and limp from longing for food, and she went in. There were tumblers of milk on the counter. A halfpennyworth of milk and a pennyworth of bread must make up her meal. The remaining penny and halfpenny must be left to pay for her breakfast to-morrow. She drank the milk in the shop, and she ate the bread in the open air, sitting on a common outside the village among great ferns. Meg thought she had never tasted bread so delicious as this. She felt as if she would like to sleep here among the crisp ferns; but she got up, resolved to walk all the way to London if the daylight would but last.

The fingerpost pointed down a road bordered on either side by pine trees. It ran through a wood. The west glowed before her, and the trees marshaled darkly against the light. The birds flew twittering across the sky, and all the insects seemed to be singing good-night to the day. The straight road seemed to stretch like a white ribbon before Meg. It was very lonely. She did not like the solitude; but she would not admit to herself that she was frightened. Yet an awe was creeping over her. The trees seemed supremely dignified. She felt very small and insignificant as she walked under their silence.

After awhile she heard a sound. It was a distant rumble. She looked round. A cart was coming along. It was filled with hay. Meg thought how pleasant it would be to creep within, tuck herself inside the hay, and sleep while the plodding horse bore her on to her destination. She loitered and waited until the cart passed, and then went right out into the road; but at the sight of the large, red-faced man, whose chin was resting on his chest and whose eyes were closed, Meg went quickly back into the path. The rumble of the cart died away, and again nothing was heard but the twitter of birds and the drone of the insects. Presently she heard a voice spreading in song through the dusk. It sang loud and discordantly. In Meg's childish experiences songs sung in such tones had a place; she gave a fierce little shiver, and hid behind the trees. She was naturally fearless; but she remained quiet as a little ghost until the figure, with unsteady gait, had passed. Then Meg resumed her way determinedly.

All at once she began to realize how tired she was. It seemed as if she had lost all her strength. She must lie down. In the faint light and silence, amid the calm trees, she must lie down and rest.

How quiet and still it was, as if all nature were bidding Meg trust to its protection and sleep till morning.

She looked around. There were no hayricks, but there were clumps of fern and soft sand covered thickly with the brown needles of pine. Then again Meg thought she heard the rumble of wheels, distant like wheels heard in a dream, not jolting wheels, but soft swift-rolling wheels. A carriage drawn by two horses was driving down the road toward London. Meg dreamily remembered how once she had driven in just such a beautiful carriage by Mr. Fullbloom's side; how easily they had traveled. In her weariness came a longing to be taken up into this carriage and to be driven along. She stood looking in its direction. It came nearer. It was an open carriage; a man was sitting inside it alone. She discerned the gleam of white hair on which the western light fell. Then she became aware of a stern face thrust forward, looking out at her. She had seen that face before. Where had she seen it? She dreamily remembered. It was that of the old gentleman who had bidden her never mention her childhood.

At a word from him the carriage stopped, and he beckoned to Meg. She hesitated to come forward; she felt inclined to run away. There was a vague motive in that impulse of flight. It partook of all the past alarm and misery, and she felt very much as if she stood on the brink of a precipice. The old gentleman beckoned again impatiently, and a grotesque idea flitted through Meg's mind that she must have lain under that tree, gone to sleep, and had a dream. The carriage, the horses, the servants, the dreaded old gentleman, were all a vision that would pass if she made an effort. She shut her eyes. When she opened them there was the figure still bending forward.

It beckoned to her. "Come here!" said a voice; but Meg did not move.

"Drive on!" exclaimed the impatient voice, and the carriage moved off.

A sudden revulsion of terror seized Meg as she watched it driving away. She roused herself and began to run.

Again the figure stooped forward—beckoned to her as the carriage stopped.

Meg approached.

"Are you not Meg—Meg Beecham?" the old gentleman said in a voice of stern surprise.

"Yes, sir," Meg answered faintly. There was a pause; the cold blue eyes rested heavily upon her as they had done that day, and their gaze suggested dislike.

"Come inside. I do not hear you," her interlocutor said, opening the carriage door. He did not stretch his hand out to help her; and Meg scrambled up, and at his bidding sat down on the seat opposite.

"Why are you here at this hour and alone? Why is your dress and your whole appearance so soiled and tattered? Have you strayed from your teachers? Have you lost your way?"

"No, sir," answered Meg.

"No, what?" repeated the old gentleman. "I do not understand your answer."

"I have not lost my way," said Meg.

"Then where are the persons in whose charge you are? Where are your schoolfellows?"

"They are not here. I did not go out with them," said Meg, and paused again.

Her dauntlessness was quelled by fatigue, and by the chill weight of these eyes fixed upon her.

"Will you answer me plainly? Why are you here, and why are you alone?"

"I have run away," said Meg with a flicker of her old spirit.