Miss Nelson kissed Marjorie, who went solemnly back to her own room.
The sun was now streaming in through the closed blinds, and some of his rays fell across the white bed where Ermengarde lay. The little girl was still fast asleep; all her long hair was tossed over her pillow, and one hand shaded her cheek. Ermengarde was a very pretty girl, and she looked lovely now in the innocent sweet sleep which visits even naughty children.
Marjorie went and stood at the foot of the bed.
"Poor Ermie," she said to herself, "I don't want to think that she could be mean, and yet—and yet—she was in Miss Nelson's room the day the miniature was stolen, and she did seem in a desperate state of trouble that time when she asked me to make an excuse for her to go back to the house. And then what funny words Susy did use that day in the cottage, although she explained them all away afterward. Dear, dear, dear, it's horrid to think that Ermie could do anything wrong. And she looks so sweet in her sleep. I wish Miss Nelson hadn't woke me, and told me to be a sort of spy. But oh, poor Basil! I'd do anything in all the world—I'd even be mean, to help Basil."
Marjorie sat down on her own little bed, which was opposite to Ermengarde's. The motto which her mother had given her long ago, the old sacred and time-honored motto, "I serve," floated back to her mind.
"It will be horrid if I have to give up going to Glendower," she whispered under her breath. "I am unlucky about treats, and I do love Lily. Still, I remember what mother said, 'When you are a servant to others, you are God's servant, Marjorie.' Mother died a week afterward. Oh dear, oh dear, I can't forget her words; but I should dearly like to go to Glendower all the same."
As Marjorie sat on her little bed, she was kicking her feet backward and forward, and not being a particularly gentle little mortal, she knocked over a box, which effectually wakened Ermengarde.
"What are you doing there?" asked the elder sister. "What in the world are you dressed for, Maggie? It surely is not seven o'clock yet?"
"Yes, it is; it's a quarter-past seven," replied Marjorie.
"Oh, I suppose you are so excited about your stupid old Glendower."