"A lady she was in all her ways, every bit of her; and the man as let her die here all alone was a brute—that he was!" said Tilly, with vehemence.
"What man?" asked the child, in a low voice.
"Go to bed," said Tilly severely, through her sobs.
"Was it my pappy?" said the child, who had seen and heard strange things during her seven-years' life.
"Go to bed," repeated Tilly. "You promised as you'd never ask another question."
"I will not, Tilly," said Meg, turning away, and returning through the moonlight to bed.
The child kept her word, and never alluded to the subject again to Tilly.
A few days later, when she was helping the old servant to tidy the rooms after the departure of some lodgers from the drawing-room floor, Tilly was surprised by the eagerness with which she craved permission to keep a crumpled fashion-plate that she had found among the litter. It represented a simpering young woman in a white ball dress, decked with roses. Permission having been granted her to appropriate the work of art, Meg carried it up to her attic, and hid it away in a box. Had any one cared to observe the child, it would have been remarked that she, who kissed nobody, lavished kisses upon this meaningless creation of a dressmakers' brain; gazed at it, murmured to it, hid it away, and slept with it under her pillow.
The next great event marking Meg's childhood had been the arrival of Mr. William Standish to the lodging-house. It had occurred nearly two years after the talk with Tilly concerning her mother. Meanwhile the old servant had died.
Meg had watched with interest the arrival of the new lodger's properties; and she had listened, fascinated, to his lusty voice, singing to the accompaniment of hammering, and rising above the flurry of settling down.