Mrs. Grey looked up, and smiled. How many times she had prayed for this day!
CHAPTER III.
Margaret never knew what caused this sudden change, but it was simply this. If it was a passion with her to love, it was also a passion to avoid unpleasant sights. And the picture drawn by Agnes Cameron revolted her. To have somebody share her room who kept everything in disorder would be something intolerable. All her life long she had been used to the beauty of perfectly-kept rooms; on the mother's part this was mere feminine nicety, such as any woman might possess. In Margaret it was the artistic element inherited from her father; she must have order reign where she dwelt, not because it is meet and right to be orderly, but because it hurt her eye to see confusion. At this stage of her history, she would have been surprised to be told this; perhaps have stoutly denied it. But a realizing sense of what a hardship it would be to her to have such a room-mate as Jane Cameron had come over her now, and, with it, confusion of face that she had behaved in so ungrateful a way. It was not in her to ask any one's pardon, out and out, but the kiss and the little speech from her were equivalent to going down on her knees, had she been somebody else.
Mrs. Grey seized this gentler mood at once.
"I have been thinking," she said, without comment or ado, "what is to be done about your education. You are too old to go to school, and perhaps I could manage to teach you myself. But in order for that, I shall have to find out how far your mother took you."
"She took me as far as she could, and then let me go on by myself. Now, about algebra, for instance. She knew nothing about it, but there was a number of old school-books in the house where we lived, and I was allowed the use of them."
"And you studied algebra?"
"Yes, I studied it just as I should take a dose of medicine—swallowed it down, and then helped my self to a lump of sugar, to take the taste out."