"No," said Mona reflectively. "You have said definitely what you intended to say, and few girls could have done as much under the circumstances. Moreover, you have said it in your own way, and that is better than saying it in some one else's way. No, I would not write it over again."
"Thanks awfully. I am very glad you think it will do. It is a great weight off my mind to have it done. I owe a great deal to you, Miss Maclean."
"I owe you a great deal," said Mona, colouring. "You have taught me a lesson against hasty judgment. When you came into the shop to buy blue ribbon, I certainly did not think you capable of that amount of moral pluck," and she glanced at the letter on Matilda's lap.
"What you must have thought of us!" exclaimed Matilda, blushing in her turn. "Two stuck-up, provincial—cats! Tell me, Miss Maclean, did Dr Dudley know then—what I know about you?"
Matilda was progressing. She saw that Mona winced at the unceasing reference to Lady Munro, so she attempted a periphrasis.
"He does not know now."
"Then I shall like Dr Dudley as long as I live. He is sarcastic and horrid, but he must be one of the people you were talking of the other day who see the invisible."
For Mona had got into the way of giving utterance to her thoughts almost without reserve when Matilda Cookson was with her. It was pleasant to see the look of rapt attention on the girl's face, and Mona did not realise—or realising, she did not care—how little her companion understood. Mona's talk ought to have been worth listening to in those days when her life was so destitute of companionship; but the harvest of her thought was carried away by the winds and the waves, and only a few stray gleanings fell into the eager outstretched hands of Matilda Cookson. Yet the girl was developing, as plants develop on a warm damp day in spring, and Mona was unspeakably grateful to her. The Colonel's story had not interfered with Mona's determination to "take up each day with both hands, and live it with all her might;" but it certainly had not made it any easier to see the ideal in the actual. Here, however, was one little human soul who clung to her, depended on her, learnt from her; and it would have been difficult to determine on which side the balance of benefit really lay.