Mrs. Cuxton made up a bed on the settle, and drew it to the fire and then took off the wet shoes and stockings, warming the cold feet between her hands. Meg woke up and remonstrated faintly, but was too utterly worn out to care much what happened. The reaction from the tremendous excitement of the night was telling on her, and she was almost too weary to stand, though she felt a sort of comfort in this rough woman's tenderness.
"How kind you are, and what a deal of trouble I am giving you!" she said, as Mrs. Cuxton made her lie down in the improvised bed, and tucked her in with a motherly admonition to "put sleep betwixt her and her sorrows".
"I can't think whatever your people were about to let you do such a thing, and you only a slip of a girl. Trouble? you're no trouble in the world, missy; but your mother must be breaking her heart to-night for you!" cried Mrs. Cuxton; and there were actually tears in her eyes.
"I haven't got a mother," said Meg. "Nobody's heart will break for me, so it really doesn't much matter, you know, what happens, and I am too tired to think; besides, it's done now!" Her eyelids closed again, almost while she was speaking; and Mrs. Cuxton left her with a muttered ejaculation, worn out with weariness and excitement, sleeping like a child over the very threshold of the new life.
It was in Sheerhaven that Meg was married to Barnabas Thorpe. She took that last irrevocable step with a curious unflinching determination,—a sense, half womanly, half childish, that having gone so far, there had better be no going back; that having trusted him so much, the responsibility was his altogether.
"I can't do any other way," he had told her. "I couldn't take ye with me without that; ye must have the protection o' my name, and give me that much right i' the eyes o' the world to fend for ye,—that's all I am wanting. I ha' never thought to marry since I was 'called'."
The girl, standing in the door of the black hut where he had brought her the night before, was quite silent for a full minute, her face full of conflicting emotions.
"If you say we must do it, then—very well," she said at last. "I may as well be Margaret Thorpe as Margaret Deane."
The preacher turned quickly; her quiet assent discomposed him, though in his heart he believed his own words: for the sake of the maid's good name there was no other way.
"Lass!" he said earnestly, "it seemed to me a call o' the Lord's, an' I had no doubts; but ye are young, an' I'm no natural mate for ye. If ye choose, I'll find that father ye talk of, wherever he may be, an' make him understan' the truth. I'll leave ye here this hour and go; but, having come out o' the city o' destruction, to my mind ye had better stay out."