Margaret sighed.
"Get me a hammer and a nail, grandma," she said, after a moment, "and I'll put it in a good light; the light is everything, you know."
A hammer and nail were brought, and the picture hung, and the two went out into the garden, and presently the girl was singing like a nightingale from her over-brimming heart. But suddenly she stopped and looked in at the window of the room where the old lady had returned to see the unpacking and uncreasing of the clothes which had traveled in the unpretending Gladstone bag.
"Oh, grandma, I beg your pardon! I forgot! Perhaps the earl won't like my singing?"
Mrs. Hale laughed.
"The earl! My dear, he is right at the other end of the building and could scarcely hear a brass band from here! But come in now, Margaret, and have some supper. You must go to bed early after your long journey, or you won't sow the seed for those roses I want to see in your cheeks!"
When she woke in the morning with the scent of the honeysuckle wafting across her face, Margaret could almost have persuaded herself that Leyton Court was a vision of a dream, and that she should find herself presently on her way to the art school at Kensington amidst all the London noise and smoke. To most Londoners the country in June is a dream of Paradise; what must it have been to this young girl, with the soul of an artist, with every nerve throbbing in sympathy with the sky, the flowers, the songs of the birds?
Like a vision herself, her plainly made morning dress of a soft, dove color and fitting her slim young shape with the grace of a well-made garment that can afford to be plain, she ran down the oak stairs into the parlor. But Mrs. Hale was not there, and Mary, who glanced with shy admiration at the lovely face and pretty dress, said that she had gone to see the butler.
"You will find her in the pantry, miss, if you like. It is at the end of this passage, to the right. You can't miss it, miss."
But Margaret did miss it, for her idea of a pantry was a small place in the nature of a cupboard, whereas the pantry at the Court was a large and spacious room, and Margaret, seeing nothing to answer to her idea, opened a door, entered, found herself before another door, opened that, discovered that she was in a round kind of a lobby surrounded, like Blue Beard's chamber, with other doors, and all at once learned that she had lost herself.