“She won’t give me the letter. I’m to have it when I go home for good; and I’m to go home for good at the holidays,” whimpered Janey.
“Poor Janey!” said Margaret, petting the blonde head on her shoulder.
“Margaret Shields, come here!” cried Miss Marlett, in a shaky voice, from the boudoir.
“Come to the back music-room when she’s done with you,” the other girl whispered. And Margaret marched, with a beating heart, into Miss Marlett’s chamber.
“My dear Margaret!” said Miss Marlett, holding out her hands. She was standing up in the middle of the boudoir. She ought to have been sitting grimly, fortified behind her bureau; that was the position in which she generally received pupils on these gloomy occasions.
“My dear Margaret!” she repeated. The girl trembled a little as the school-mistress drew her closer, and made her sit down on a sofa.
“What has happened?” she asked. Her lips were so dry that she could scarcely speak.
“You must make up your mind to be very brave. Your father——”
“Was it an accident?” asked Margaret, suddenly. She knew pretty well what was coming. Often she had foreseen the end, which it needed no prophet to foretell. “Was it anything very dreadful?”
“Mr. Maitland does not say. You are to be called for to-day. Poor Daisy!”