“Well, I’ll keep you for to-day, and I’ll give you—let me see—a shilling a day and your meals.”
“Oh ma’am, may the Lord Almighty bless ye for ever and ever!”
The girl sprang forward, fell on her knees, clasped Mrs. Anderson’s hand, and pressed it to her lips.
CHAPTER V.
PEGGY LOST AND FOUND.
While Peggy was enjoying herself to her heart’s content at the Andersons’, laughing and joking, and helping Mrs. Anderson in a dozen ways—so that that good woman said she had never met her like before, and never would again—a very different scene was taking place at Preston Manor; for although it was the custom for the family not to think of getting up until seven in the morning, yet that hour arrived all in good time, and the very first thing Molly thought of as she opened her brown eyes was of the stranger, the queer, beautiful, unpolished, and yet altogether lovable Peggy Desmond. How had Peggy slept? How was she that morning? Was she still lonely and heartbroken because of the Irish cabin and the Irish friends?
At a few minutes after seven each morning the girls’ own special maid came in, as her custom was, with two cups of nice, tempting hot tea, and a plate of thin bread and butter.
“Shall I take some tea to the young lady next door, miss?” asked Ruth, addressing Jessie as she spoke. But Molly hastily made reply, “No, Ruth, bring Miss Desmond’s tea in here, and I’ll take it to her; I’d like to, just for once,” she added, looking appealingly at Jessie.
Jessie’s face grew rather red and her lips and eyes rather cross; but she made no remark until Ruth had left the room, having first placed a little tray with tea and bread and butter on a small table by Molly’s side.
“I suppose you’re going to spoil that girl,” said Jessie, when at last the sisters were alone. “I hope, I’m sure, you won’t; it will annoy mother and me dreadfully.”
But when Molly said in her sweet voice, “It’s only just for the first morning, Jess,” Jessie’s crossness dissolved into a sleepy smile. Having drunk off her tea she fell into another doze, for she need not get up until half-past seven. Molly, however, rose softly, put on a pretty blue flannel dressing-gown, and, holding the tempting little tray in her hand, entered Peggy Desmond’s room.