“‘The Mill on the Floss’”—holding it out.
“Hum! Looks dry—is it?”
“Dry!” exclaimed Margery. “Oh, it is so beautiful! Have you never read it?”
“I hardly think so,” confessed the young squire. “I will look it out in the library when I get back, and dig into it to-night, when I am smoking.”
“Miss Lawson doesn’t approve of story-books,” said Margery; “but I am not so strict.”
“And how are you getting on?”
“Oh, all right! I am deep in German just now. I speak French every day when I go to the rectory. I want to be perfect by the time her ladyship comes back. Mother has told me all about her kindness to me. I can scarcely remember her when she went away, but she must be nice.”
“Nice!” exclaimed Mr. Crosbie. “She is a brick—a million times too good for that old curmudgeon, Sir Hubert!”
“No one seems to like him,” Margery remarked, thoughtfully—her face had grown almost sad; “but mother is never tired of telling me all about Lady Coningham—how she took me when I was a baby, and my poor, dear real mother was killed, and put me with mother Morris. I am not very old, Mr. Stuart, but I feel I can never repay her ladyship all she has done for me. Sometimes I seem to have a faint, misty recollection of the days when I first came here, and I can see a face that was—oh, so pretty and kind!”
“My mother always says Catherine Coningham was very beautiful,” Stuart said, as the girl paused. “I remember her as a faded, pale woman, very kind, as you say.”