MARGARET.
The little friend that you see in the picture is a little girl that I knew long ago. As you can judge from the picture, her father and mother were not what we call gentlefolk. But simple country people as Margaret’s parents were, they had as warm hearts—yes, and as good manners too—as you would meet with anywhere.
Margaret’s father was just an honest English farmer, and her mother a worthy active farmer’s wife, while little Margaret herself was the perfection of a merry country girl. She was up early to help her mother in the morning. She would rise at cock-crow, wash and dress herself, make her own bed, and then kneel down, as we see her in the picture, and say her prayers. And if it was summer, the sun, in rising would cast his slanting rays in at the window, and gild her pretty head the while with his soft light.
I had been very ill, and went down to stay at the farm to get strong and well again. In fact I took a lodging there for a short time. But I already knew the people, for I had once lived in the neighbourhood. It was the month of October when I went down, after having been long confined to my sick room in London; and I can remember now how beautiful the woods looked, as I drove from the station up the hill to the farm-house. The leaves of the oak were already mellowing into bronze; the beeches were changing to a deep orange; and here and there the pale yellow of the chestnut showed in relief against the dark green of the unchanging fir. The whole landscape glowed in the warm lights and shadows of autumn colouring.
The old farm-house was perfect in point of cleanliness and comfort. I soon regained my health and strength, and was beginning to think of returning home again, when the sad event happened which I am going to tell you of.
Little Margaret used to wander in and out, and round about, near her father’s farm, just as she pleased. She was known and loved by everyone, great and small; by the young children particularly, who would run out of their cottages as she passed to see and speak to her. One evening she was returning home across a plot of open ground near the farm, when she saw, drawn up out of the road, one of those houses on wheels which gipsies travel about in. A woman stood outside with a little brown baby in her arms; and Margaret could not pass without saying a word to the baby.
“But it doesn’t look well,” said Margaret to the mother.
“No, missie, nor ’tain’t well neither,” replied the woman; “and I have one inside a deal worser. I don’t know what ails ’em. Would yer like to step inside and see the child?”
Margaret ran up the steps without a moment’s hesitation, and found a poor sick boy about seven years old stretched upon a hard mattress, tossing from side to side in what was evidently a bad fever. The good-hearted child said to the woman,—“I am sure your little boy is very ill; I will run home and ask mother what you had better do for him.”
She hurried home full of the subject, and I was sitting in the garden when she came running in. I asked the reason of her haste, when she told me of the sick children. From her description, the idea at once occurred to me that they were sick with scarlet fever; and the parish doctor, whom we asked to go to see them, afterwards confirmed my opinion.
Those children, however, struggled through the terrible illness; but, alas! our little Margaret—I say our because a strong love had grown up in my heart for the good and pretty child—sickened with the fever, which she had caught during those few minutes spent in the fever-stricken cart. Days of wearing anxiety and nights of watching followed. It was heart-breaking to see the little head rolling from side to side upon the pillow, while the pretty eyes looked with unmeaning gaze upon us all: the voice too, that we had so loved to hear, sounded strange as it talked in the wild delirium of fever.
After a time the fever abated, and the child became more tranquil, though weaker. One day some sad words fell from the little parched lips: “Mother dear,” she said, “set me up a little; I want to see out of the window, and say good-bye to everything.”
The poor mother raised her up, and Margaret could see the soft evening sky, and the outside world just melting into twilight under the warm smile of the setting sun.
“Is it, as they say, mother, more beautiful there?” she whispered, pointing to the sky.
“Where, darling?” asked her mother.
“In heaven,” said the child, “which I shall see so soon.”
“Not soon! Oh, my darling, not soon! don’t say it!” cried the poor farmer’s wife.
“Yes, very soon. Don’t cry, mother dear.”
And Margaret was right. Only a few days more, and the setting sun shed its warm light upon her grave.
This is a very, very sad story; and perhaps has brought tears into the eyes of some of my dear little readers. I hardly know why I have told it, except that my stories would not be like reality, if they were always happy. The world has shadows as well as sunshine.
PUZZLE-PAGE.
Now here are six objects for you to find out. One begins with B, one with C, one with D, one with F, one with G, and one with J. My little boy found them all out in less than five minutes.
