The outer door swept open and a young girl, entering hastily, cried sharply as she knelt beside the prostrate form: “O Meg! dear, brave Meg! what has happened?”
“Nothing, Elsie dear. I have only been bewildered of late, and had forgotten that this is no longer home.”
“Must we leave soon?”
“Within a week.”
“It is sudden; but I knew it must come sooner or later. I am not sorry, either, Meg; for we will go out into the world to work for each other and make a new home.”
Meg shook her head. “You are brave, Elsie, with the ignorance of youth. You do not know what gulfs lie between your hope and its accomplishment. While I——”
“You, Meg,” interrupted Elsie, “are wearied with the weight of your burdens, and I must take them off your shoulders and rest you good and long.”
“Oh, confident youth! What a sweet comfort this little rose is to me,” and Margaret took the bright face between her hands and kissed it fondly. It was a rose indeed that Margaret raised to her lips. Brilliant with the rich coloring of the brunette, lit up by a pair of dark velvety eyes, a full, red-lipped, delicately-curved mouth, and framed in a mass of black, lustrous, curling hair, Elsie’s face was undeniably beautiful. Somewhat petite in form, she was the embodiment of grace in every movement. Naturally hopeful and sweet-tempered, she had been all her life a source of comfort to Margaret. If she felt that she had greater patience, she found encouragement in Elsie’s greater hopefulness. If she felt in herself greater power to conquer adverse circumstances, she relied equally upon Elsie’s faculty of throwing the best light upon everything, and taking trouble as little to heart as possible. Unlike, yet like. Margaret’s strength was born of conviction and experience, and duty, her imperial mistress, held her firmly to her course. Elsie’s courage and cheerfulness were as inherent a part of herself as her rippling black hair or her daintily-fashioned foot, and love was the governing impulse of her life. She would do for love’s sake what no amount of cogent reasoning could convince her ought to be done for duty’s. She “hated the name of duty,” she had been heard to declare with an imperious stamp of her little foot.
“If one was good, because love prompted her to do all these nice things for other people, wasn’t that enough? And as for ‘doing good to those who despitefully use you,’ she believed the Lord wasn’t very angry if you only just didn’t do them any harm! And she felt sure that He would forgive her if she couldn’t and wouldn’t like the Dempsters.”
All this had happened long ago, and now it came back to them as Meg told Elsie of Mr. Dempster’s offer.