"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.