They piled up two plates of good things and put in the brown man's cupboard, and Mr. Gillet laid his unread English papers on the chair near the cat.
"That 'Telegraph' is a month old," he said deprecatingly seeing Meg smile upon him her first smile that day.
Chapter XIX
A Pale-Blue Hair Ribbon
She in her virginal beauty
As pure as a pictured saint,
How should this sinning and sorrow
Have for her danger or taint?
The reason our sweet pale Margaret had been reluctant of her smiles was on account of the very man who alone missed them.
Quite a warm friendship had sprung up during the month between the little fair-faced girl, who looked with such serene blue eyes to a future she felt must be beautiful, and the world-worn man, who looked back to a past all blackened and unlovely by his own acts.
He rode with the two girls every-day, because Mrs. Hassal did not like them going long distances alone; and, seeing Judy seldom walked her horse, and Meg's steed had not a canter in it, it fell out that he kept beside the slow and timid rider all the time.
"You remind me of a little sister I had who died," he said slowly to Meg once, after a long talk. "Perhaps if she were alive now I should not be quite so contemptible."