Two friends will in a needle's eye repose,
But the whole world is narrow for two foes.
—Jacula Prudentum.
After the storm there was a calm.
Margaret lay on the settle in the farm kitchen recovering slowly from a sharp attack of marsh fever, and declaring in apparent jest, that had more than a substratum of truth, that she was in no hurry to get well.
"Some people hate being waited on and made a fuss over," she said; "but I really like it; I like it when Tom brings me books, and Mr. Thorpe flowers, and Cousin Tremnell tats lace caps for me. You are all so nice when I am ill, that I don't see why I should give up being an invalid. Why should I sit on a bench and spread my own bread and dripping, when some one else will make toast for me and bring it over here? I am not at all sure that I'll even condescend to put it into my own mouth! You must cut it into three-cornered pieces, or I won't look at it!"
And in the general laugh over her pretended airs, only one of her hearers guessed how often the joke, that had become a family joke, about liking to be waited on, hid real weariness and exhaustion.
She could hardly have found a shorter cut to the favour of these strange kinsfolk. They all united in petting her now that she was really ill.
Mrs. Tremnell certainly liked her better for her delicacy. Meg always privately believed that the good woman thought ill-health ladylike and more befitting her birth. Tom and her father-in-law could never do enough for her.
She was, like her father, a charming patient, ready with prettiest thanks for any service, and never complaining. Not one of them but would have been sorry to miss the very feminine element she had brought into that rather rough household.