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.