“Poor Uncle Tex!” Virginia laughed, and then she returned to explain to Margaret that her guardian had suddenly remembered that he had a very important engagement, but that in all probability they would find him awaiting them at the ranch house.
But Virginia was wrong in her surmise. When the ranch house was reached she went at once to the small bed room near the kitchen. The door was open and the room was empty, but a neatly folded linen suit lay over a chair while the Panama hat reposed on the bed. Uncle Tex was gone to his cabin somewhere over in the mountains.
Sinking down on another chair, Virginia laughed merrily, but hearing someone tap upon the door, she sat up with suddenly resumed dignity, for she was still playing a part, but it was only her brother who entered.
CHAPTER IX—THE REVELATION.
“Virg,” Malcolm blurted out, “I feel that we are not doing right to treat a lonely orphan girl in this fashion. I am positive that I heard her crying in her room just now. I know it is premature, and not at all according to our plans, but I do wish you would go in and comfort her. Tell her the whole truth, Sis, and if she doesn’t want to stay with us, I’ll write back to that eastern seminary and see what can be done.”
Virginia looked at her brother with laughing eyes, but they quickly sobered as she said, “I agree with you, Malcolm. I believe that we have made a mistake. The truth is always best after all. Suppose you go to your room now and reappear just yourself.”
The lad went away whistling. Somehow, he felt happier than he had in many a day.
Virginia tapped lightly on the closed door of the big sunny southwest room to which she had taken their ward immediately upon their arrival at V. M. A half sob accompanied the words, barely heard by the listener. “Come in.”
On the bed Margaret had thrown herself in an abandon of grief. Virginia knelt by her side and said compassionately, “Margaret dear, don’t cry this way. Was it so very hard for you to come to us?”
“Ye-es. Next to losing father it was the hardest thing I ever had to face,” was the broken reply that came from the depths of a pillow. “But forgive me, if I seem ungrateful. Mr. Wallace has been telling me that Mr. Davis did not send for me from unkind motives, and so I have changed my mind. Tell him, please, that I am not going to be rebellious and that I’ll try to be cheerful and bring a little sunshine into his home. He must be a very lonely old man and he was kind to my father.”