“Why, well only get into another scrape,” said Janey, ruefully.
“No, come away; I’ve got leave for you. You’re to help me to pack”
“To pack!” cried Janey. “Why, you’re not expelled, are you? You’ve done nothing. You’ve not even had a perfectly harmless letter from a boy who is just like a brother to you and whom you’ve known for years.”
Margaret only beckoned again and turned away, Janey following in silence and intense curiosity.
When they reached their room, where Margaret’s portmanteau had already been placed, the girl began to put up such things as she would need for a short journey. She said nothing till she had finished, and then she sat down on a bed and told Janey what she had learned; and the pair “had a good cry,” and comforted each other as well as they might.
“And what are you going to do?” asked Janey, when, as Homer says, “they had taken their fill of chilling lamentations.”
“I don’t know!”
“Have you no one else in all the world?”
“No one at all. My mother died when I was a little child, in Smyrna. Since then we have wandered all about; we were a long time in Algiers, and we were at Marseilles, and then in London.”
“But you have a guardian, haven’t you?”