"I have put you in the big spare room," Mrs. Danvers said, as with Margaret following in her wake she led the way slowly upstairs. "Nancy and Joan have the other spare rooms, and I was really keeping this for an old aunt of mine, who may come later. If she does come while you are here, you won't mind turning out for her, will you, and going into the dressing-room opening out of this? There is a bed in it, and really it is quite a fair-sized little room; but I thought as this was empty I should like you to have it for the time being anyway. A nice room, isn't it?" Mrs. Danvers was so evidently well pleased with herself for having given a mere holiday governess the best bedroom in her house that Margaret hastened to admire it.
It was indeed a luxuriously furnished room, perfect in all its appointments, and its handsome solid old mahogany furniture looked well against the dull blue Axminster carpet and the blue silk hangings of the big double bed. The walls were blue also.
"Yes, I think you will be comfortable," Mrs. Danvers said, glancing round. "You see there is a sofa and an armchair and a writing-table, so that if at any time you want to get away from the noisy young folk downstairs you have got a nice retreat to come to. They have unstrapped your trunk I see; but as Collins, the head housemaid, is out to-night, your unpacking has not been done for you."
"Oh, but thank you very much, I can do that myself," said Margaret hastily, wondering within herself as she spoke what would have happened supposing Collins had not been out, and had insisted upon unpacking her things, and had seen that all her linen was marked with a name quite different to the one she had come in. The thought of the danger she had escaped made her turn quite pale. This sudden pallor was not lost upon Mrs. Danvers who, attributed it, not unnaturally, to extreme fatigue, and who thereupon hastened her own departure from the room, with a kindly expressed wish as she left, that Margaret would sleep well.
But tired though Margaret was, she felt that she could not go to bed until she had removed her own name from every article of her underlinen, and so having unpacked her trunk she took a pair of scissors and set to work. Fortunately for her purpose, her things had not been marked in ink but with tapes bearing her name in woven letters, and these she carefully ripped off one by one, and making a little pile of them burned them all in the grate. Then, if any maid saw them before Margaret had time to remark them with the ink and tapes that she meant to buy, the most she would feel would be a mild wonder that any young lady having such nice undergarments as Miss Carson had, should risk losing them at the wash by having no name upon them.
CHAPTER IX
THE DANVERS FAMILY
In spite of her settled conviction that, weary though she was, she was far too miserable to close an eye that night. Margaret's slumbers were sound. A vigorous banging on a door in the near neighbourhood of her own, a banging which was answered by a sleepy and irritable yell, roused her about six o'clock the next morning. Otherwise she could have slept on for another hour or more. But once awake further sleep was impossible. Not only were her neighbours exceedingly noisy—from snatches of conversation shouted across the passage as they dressed, Margaret gathered that most of the junior members of the house were going down to the sea to bathe—but her own thoughts were of themselves sufficient to keep her awake. She had fallen asleep the night before with the dismal thought in her mind that though her long desired wish to stay in a house full of young people had been most unexpectedly realised, the very first thing she had done was to declare enmity with all of them, and the depressing fact came vividly before her mind the instant she awoke. She found herself wishing most fervently that she had been content to remain Margaret Anstruther, and had never met Eleanor Carson, or conceived the mad idea of changing places with her. However, as it was obviously too late to entertain reflections of that sort now, she made an effort to dismiss that unprofitable wish from her mind, and in order to divert her thoughts the more effectually, resolved, early though it was, to get up.
As soon as the sound of many feet clattering noisily downstairs told her that the coast was clear, she found her way to the bathroom, and having bathed and dressed felt more courage to face the trials of the day that lay before her.