“Well, it is just this,” said Aneta. “You sent a letter yesterday to Maggie.”
“I did,” said Mrs. Martin; “and great need I had to send it.”
“In that letter you informed Maggie that you and your husband were coming to see her to-morrow.”
“Bo-peep wishes—I mean, James wishes—to.”
“Really, Aneta, had not we better go?” said Lady Lysle.
“Not yet, auntie, please.—Mrs. Martin, I begged for a holiday to-day on purpose to come and see you.”
“If it’s because you think I’ll keep James—Bo-peep—I mean James—from having his heart’s wish, I am sorry you have wasted your time,” said Mrs. Martin. “The fact is, he is very angry indeed with Maggie. He considers her his own child now, which of course is true, seeing that he has married me, and I really can’t go into particulars; but he is determined to see her and to see Mrs. Ward, and he’s not a bit ashamed of being—being—well, what he is—an honorable tradesman—a grocer.”
“But perhaps you are aware,” said Lady Lysle, “that the daughters of grocers—I mean tradesmen—are not admitted to Aylmer House.”
Mrs. Martin turned her frightened eyes on the lady. “Maggie isn’t the real daughter of a tradesman,” she said then. “She is only the stepdaughter. Her own father was”––
“Yes,” said Aneta, “we all know what her own father was—a splendid man, one of the makers of our Empire. We are all proud of her own father, and we do not see for a moment why Maggie should not live up to the true circumstances of her birth, and I have come here to-day, Mrs. Martin, to ask you to help me. If you and your husband come to Aylmer House there will be no help, for Maggie will certainly have to leave the school.”