"Thank God, I am going back to work!" she thought as she hastened home. "I want to learn all that one human being can. It is awful to be buried alive in the coffin of one's own ignorance and helplessness."
Alas for the dreams of youth! We may work and strive, but do the coffin-walls ever recede so very far?
CHAPTER XLVI.
FAREWELL TO BORROWNESS.
Two great honours were in store for Mona before she left Borrowness.
In the first place, the Misses Brown paid her a formal call. They were arrayed in Sabbath attire, and were civil even to effusiveness; but they did not invite Mona to their house, nor suggest another excursion. Auntie Bell's remarks had had the intended effect of making them feel very small; but, on reflection, they did not see that they could have acted otherwise. It was a matter of comparative indifference to them whether their brother married a rich woman or a poor one; it was no part of their programme that he should marry at all. They found it difficult to predict exactly how he would be influenced by this fresh light on the situation; and, for the present, they did not think it necessary to tell him anything about it.
Some mysterious and exaggerated report, however, of "high connections" must certainly have got wind, or I cannot think that the second and greater honour would have fallen to Mona's share. It came in the form of a note on thick hand-made paper, embossed with a gorgeous crest
"Mr and Mrs Cookson request the pleasure of Miss Maclean's company to dinner, etc."
Dinner! Mona had not "dined" for months. She tossed the note aside with a laugh.
"If my friend Matilda has not played me false," she said—"and I don't believe she has—this is indeed success!"