"Heigh-ho! What's wrong now?" Mr. Royston stopped in the act of turning his newspaper inside-out, and fixed inquiring eyes upon his second daughter.
"Pen is so disagreeable."
"Come, come! You needn't complain of other people. Pen is a good girl—always was! I wish other girls were as good."
Pen wore an air of pretty and appropriate meekness.
"I know! I'm always the one in the wrong."
"Then, if I were you, I wouldn't be—that's all. I would take care to be in the right."
Mrs. Royston wisely rose, and a general move followed. Magda fled upstairs, only to find her room in process of being "done;" so she caught up a rough-coat and a tam-o'-shanter, and escaped into the garden. Already the snow had ceased to fall, and the sky was clearing.
To and fro on a white carpet in the kitchen garden she paced, pitying herself at first for home grievances, but turning soon to the thought of Patricia, going over the past interview, seeing again the dainty flower-like face, hearing afresh the pretty voice, picturing the joys of coming intimacy.
Now at last she would have a real friend, the sort of friend she had always wanted, a satisfying friend, one who would meet her needs, one who would understand her feelings, one who would enter into her dreams and aspirations, one to whom she could look up with unbounded admiration—different altogether from good little Beatrice Major, who was well enough in her way, but totally unlike this!
That word—"aspirations"—pulled up the recollection of Rob and of all that he had said. She was to begin at once to make ready for her future life with him.