"But you can't!" Eleanor exclaimed sharply. "That is out of the question. How can we change now?"
"By telling everybody everything," Margaret said. "They cannot do anything very dreadful to us, can they?"
Eleanor gave a short and very mirthless laugh.
"They can't do anything very dreadful to you—no," she said. Then in a perfectly expressionless voice, "You have quite made up your mind, then?"
"Oh, quite," Margaret said, eagerly relieved beyond measure to find that Eleanor had received her announcement so quietly.
"And how do you mean to set about it?" Eleanor said in the same stony sort of voice. "Am I to tell Mrs. Murray first, or are you to tell Mrs. Danvers?"
"As I am up here I could tell Mrs. Murray," Margaret answered timidly, "and then we could go down together and tell Mrs. Danvers. Oh, Eleanor, you do not know how distressing it is to me to be deceiving everybody as I am doing at present. I am sure one girl, Hilary, the second daughter, knows that I am hiding something, and she is always trying to find out what it is. She makes my life a burden to me," added Margaret pathetically. "And it does make me so unhappy to feel that I cannot look everybody honestly in the face and tell nothing but the truth. And they all laugh at me, and make fun of me, and think me so silly and shy, and Mrs. Danvers asked me last night if I would like to go to California with her as a governess because I get on so well with her children."
"Are you doing any teaching, then?" Eleanor asked.
"Yes, I am a holiday governess to a little boy and a girl. Oh, I do not mind that at all—they are very good children. It is Hilary, the second daughter, that I do not like, and though some of the boys are nice, they do not take much notice of me, and I can see they do not care for me at all. And I used to think," added poor Margaret mournfully, "that all young people of my own age would like me, and that I should enjoy myself so much in their society. But that is not the worst part of it, it is the feeling that I am in the house on false pretences, and that every time they call me Miss Carson, and I answer to the name, I am telling a lie. It is so—so horrible and dishonest."
"I see," said Eleanor slowly; "but I suppose it wasn't until you found out that you didn't like being me that you began to worry about the dishonesty of the plan."