Margaret, watching him as he spoke, could not fail to be touched by the sincerity and unselfishness of his words. For reply she placed her hand in his and said softly, “I will.”
“One word more. If the time ever comes—mind, I do not expect it, I do not even beg it—but if the time does come when your heart can respond fully to the love that shall be yours as long as life lasts, you have only to say ‘come,’ and I will obey you though it be to the uttermost parts of the earth. May I ask this too?”
“It is not much to promise,” said Margaret gently, “but it may be too much to hope for. I have never had time for anything but immediate duties, and I am afraid I shall never find time for anything else. I have always felt that I belonged to these children. If, however—and I can discern but the faintest hope—if such a time should come, you may be sure that the word will not be uttered half-heartedly.”
A blush stole up to Margaret’s cheek as she spoke, making her whole face glow and soften with an unwonted beauty that the doctor’s observant eyes did not fail to note. They were suspiciously misty as he raised her hand to his lips and said fervently:
“Amen. Now let’s to business.”
CHAPTER III.
“Oh, I think it is delightful,” exclaimed Elsie as she, Margaret, and Dr. Ely stopped in the late glow of the afternoon sun before the gate of the place at Idlewild. “Such a charming tangle of briers to get scratched on while hunting for very stray berries.”
“There is something to be done here before one could hope for returns,” assented the doctor. “But let us explore the house, and see whether it is possible to exist in it.”
The house, by courtesy a cottage, had four rooms, so called. Elsie suggested boxes as a better name, but found consolation in the fact that four rooms for three people left a breathing-room that each could occupy in turn. The rooms were black with smoke and slippery with filth, and even Margaret felt something very like despair as she exclaimed piteously: “The muscle and soap it will take to cleanse it.”
“Is it habitable otherwise?” asked the doctor as he rattled windows, examined hinges and locks, and poked into chimneys and cupboards. “Fairly good. Whitewash, paint, soap, and muscle, and you won’t know it, Miss Margaret. Now let us see what the garden is like. Wants underdraining badly. Soil clayey and cold, but admirably situated for outlet of drain. A few muck-heaps and this garden will blossom like the rose.”