During the first week of her holidays she had a companion in her solitude. It was a battered doll, with rough hair and faded cheeks. It looked deserted. Rosamund Seely, a kind-hearted child, as a parting gift, had offered it to Meg on receiving the present of a beautiful new doll. "Poor Meg, you are going to be left alone. There's a dollie for you," the child had said, in transferring the belated toy; and Meg's desolate soul had been touched by the words.
For a week she had loyally carried the plaything about with her; she had perched it on a branch of the yew tree when she sat on her leafy throne; she had got to feel so lonely that she sometimes talked to it, and felt toward it as toward a companion, bidding her answer when she spoke. After awhile that constant comrade, sitting opposite to her with its grimy cheeks, its faded and ragged finery, became in its look of abandonment an emblem to Meg of herself. She grew to hate the sight of the doll; but still she would not part with it for the sake of the donor, and she thrust it in a corner of the shelf assigned to her in the dormitory.
The loneliness chilled the marrow of the child's life. The object ever in view, the repellent attitude toward her comrades, the consciousness that her replies were waited for and sometimes admired, had kept up Meg's spirit. It flagged in the length, the languor, the emptiness of those July days. There was nothing to be done but to sit up in the tree, to read, to think, and remember. As the hare seeks its form, so Meg's thoughts returned to the home where she had spent her childhood. She was always seeing that place on the stairs from which she had watched the coming and going of her only friend during those neglected years. Why did he not write to her? Why? Her lonely heart asked itself this question with insistence. He had promised to write to her, he was true, he never told a falsehood. Why did he not write? Then the conviction was borne in upon her that a letter was waiting for her at Mrs. Browne's house. Mr. Standish thought the landlady would forward it, but perhaps the stern white-haired gentleman, who told her she must forget her childhood and every one she had then met, would withhold her address from Mrs. Browne. The conviction haunted Meg. If she could but get to London she would make her way to Mrs. Browne and get that letter. Meg would lie awake, thinking of this, "If she could but get to London." The contemplation was still vague in her mind. It wanted something to condense it into a resolution, and that something came.
One late afternoon Meg sat at tea with Miss Grantley. She was always awkward under this lady's censorious glance. Stretching her hand for the bread and butter she upset her cup of milk on the teacher's dress. Miss Grantley had on her best mauve silk. She was going out to supper with a friend. As she wiped the stain from her draperies she looked icily at Meg.
"Your manners are deplorable, Miss Beecham. I do not wonder that your companions shun you. It must be most painful for young ladies to be associated with one who so richly deserves her nickname of the 'savage.'"
"I am not a savage," said Meg shortly.
"Do not answer me. Your untamed nature, which neither religion nor culture has softened, does not possess the very rudiments of civilized society. You shame this establishment. I had meant to take you out this evening."
"I would not have gone," retorted Meg, her eyes brilliant with indignation.
"Impudent little thing! Don't venture to talk to me like that!" and forgetting herself, Miss Grantley rose and gave a slap with the back of her hand on Meg's ear.