“Yes. I took it myself.”
“Oh, Margaret, I’m so afraid of his coming! If he should be recognized! If he should be taken! If he should be executed, after all these years that he has kept away and lived in safety! I keep falling asleep and dreaming that he is caught and being tried.”
“Oh, mamma, don’t be afraid. There will be some risk, no doubt; but we will lessen it as much as ever we can. And it is so little! Now, if we were at Helstone, there would be twenty—a hundred times as much. There, everybody would remember him; and if there was a stranger known to be in the house, they would be sure to guess it was Frederick; while here, nobody knows or cares for us enough to notice what we do. Dixon will keep the door like a dragon—won’t you, Dixon—while he is here?”
“They’ll be clever if they come in past me!” said Dixon, showing her teeth at the bare idea.
“And he need not go out, except in the dusk, poor fellow!”
“Poor fellow!” echoed Mrs. Hale. “But I almost wish you had not written. Would it be too late to stop him if you wrote again, Margaret?”
“I’m afraid it would, mamma,” said Margaret, remembering the urgency with which she had entreated him to come directly, if he wished to see his mother alive.
“I always dislike that doing things in such a hurry,” said Mrs. Hale.
Margaret was silent.
“Come now, ma’am,” said Dixon, with a kind of cheerful authority, “you know seeing Master Frederick is just the very thing of all others you’re longing for. And I’m glad Miss Margaret wrote off straight, without shilly-shallying. I’ve had a great mind to do it myself. And we’ll keep him snug, depend upon it. There’s only Martha in the house that would not do a good deal to save him on a pinch; and I’ve been thinking she might go and see her mother just at that very time. She’s been saying once or twice she should like to go, for her mother has had a stroke since she came here; only she didn’t like to ask. But I’ll see about her being safe off, as soon as we know when he comes, God bless him! So take your tea, ma’am, in comfort, and trust to me.”