“Gone! Without bidding me good-bye? Gone to stay? Oh! uncle, how could he? I know you didn’t like him but I did. He was——”
Margot dropped her face in her hands and sobbed bitterly. Then ashamed of her unaccustomed tears she ran out of the house and as far from it as she could. But even the blue herons could give her no amusement, though they stalked gravely up the river bank and posed beside her, where she lay prone and disconsolate in Harmony Hollow. Her squirrels saw and wondered, for she had no returning chatter for them, even when they chased one another over her prostrate person and playfully pulled at her long hair.
“He was the only friend I ever had that was not old and wise in sorrow. It was true he seemed to bring a shadow with him and while he was here I sometimes wished he would go, or had never come; yet now that he has—oh! it’s so awfully, awfully lonesome. Nobody to talk with about my dreams and fancies, nobody to talk nonsense, nobody to teach me any more songs—nobody but just old folks and animals! And he went, he went without a word or a single good-bye!”
It was, indeed, Margot’s first grief; and the fact that her late comrade could leave her so coolly, without even mentioning his plan, hurt her very deeply. But, after awhile, resentment at Adrian’s seeming neglect almost banished her loneliness; and, sitting up, she stared at Xanthippé, poised on one leg before her, apparently asleep but really waiting for anything which might turn up in the shape of dainties.
“Oh! you sweet vixen! but you needn’t pose. There’s no artist here now to sketch you, and I don’t care, not very much, if there isn’t. After all my trying to do him good, praising and blaming and petting, if he was impolite enough to go as he did—— Well, no matter!”
While this indignation lasted she felt better, but as soon as she came once more in sight of the clearing and of her uncle finishing one of Adrian’s uncompleted tasks, her loneliness returned with double force. It had almost the effect of bodily illness and she had no experience to guide her. With a fresh burst of tears she caught her guardian’s hand and hid her face on his shoulder.
“Oh! it’s so desolate. So empty. Everything’s so changed. Even the Hollow is different and the squirrels seem like strangers. If he had to go, why did he ever, ever come!”
“Why, indeed!”
Mr. Dutton was surprised and frightened by the intensity of her grief. If she could sorrow in this way for a brief friendship, what untold misery might not life have in store for her? There must have been some serious blunder in his training if she were no better fitted than this to face trouble; and for the first time it occurred to him that he should not have kept her from all companions of her own age.