Mrs. Merideth burst into tears.
“How can you take it so calmly, Frank,” she sobbed. “You don’t seem to care at all!”
Frank Spencer’s lips parted, then closed again. Perhaps it was just as well, after all, that she should not know just how much he did—care.
“It may not be myself I’m thinking of,” he said at last, quietly. “I want Margaret—happy.” And he turned away.
Margaret was not happy, however, as the days passed. In spite of everybody’s effort to act as if everything was as usual, nobody succeeded in doing it; and at last Margaret announced her determination to go back to the Mill House. She agreed, however, to call it a “visit,” for Mrs. Merideth had cried tragically:
“But, Margaret, dear, if we are going to lose you altogether by and by, surely you will give us all your time now that you can!”
CHAPTER XXXVI
Bobby McGinnis wondered sometimes that summer why he was not happier. Viewed from the standpoint of an outsider, he surely had enough to make any man happy. He was young, strong, and in a position of trust and profit. He was, moreover, engaged to the girl he loved, and that girl was everything that was good and beautiful, and he saw her almost every day. All this Bobby knew—and still he wondered.
He saw a good deal of Margaret these days. Their engagement had come to be an accepted fact, and the first flurry of surprise and comment had passed. The Mill House, with Patty in charge, was steadily progressing. Margaret had taken up her work again with fresh zest, but, true to her promise to Mrs. Merideth, she spent many a day, and sometimes two or three days at Hilcrest. All this, however, did not interfere with Bobby’s seeing her—for he, too, went to Hilcrest in accordance with Margaret’s express wishes.
“But, Bobby,” Margaret had said in response to his troubled remonstrances, “are you not going to be my husband? Of course you are! Then you must come to meet my friends.” And Bobby went.