"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.