"Who is it?" he asked rather crossly. "I'm busy. What do you want in here?"
"It is I—Margaret!" said a voice with a suspicion of tremor in it; and his niece walked round his chair, and after a moment's hesitation, sat down on a high-backed seat opposite him.
Uncle Russelthorpe straightened himself with a jerk. This was a most unprecedented visit, and his curiosity overcame his annoyance. Meg had hardly been in his study since the days when she had haunted it as a child. What could she want? It was not a house where the young ones ever intruded unnecessarily on their elders' leisure; and Mr. Russelthorpe, though he had a secret partiality for his youngest niece, did not consider her any "affair of his". His wife managed the girls, and "very funnily too," he sometimes thought.
Meg sat pressing her fingers together and looking straight at him. She had not taken this unusual step without a pretty strong motive.
"Uncle," she said, "I want advice! You used to be very kind to me when I was a little girl. Will you give it to me, please?"
"Eh? What?" said her uncle. "You'd better go to——" he was about to say "your aunt," but feeling that that counsel was rather a cruel mockery, seeing that Meg's relations with Mrs. Russelthorpe were more than usually strained just then, ended, "to your father for it."
"Yes, but I don't know how," said Meg; "he is somewhere in Greece, I suppose."
"Hm—wise man!" said Uncle Russelthorpe. "I don't, as a rule, think much of Charles' worldly wisdom; but that way he has of going off, without leaving an address, has always struck me as admirable; it secures such absolute immunity from worries."
"I suppose I am one of the worries," said Meg, with a smile that was more sad than merry. "Since I can't bother him, I'm worrying you!"
"Not at all!" said the old gentleman politely; but he drew his watch out of its fob and fidgeted.