"Dear Jean!" she said, kissing her cousin warmly. "Most welcome to Fernley, dear child! Oh, I am so glad to see you! I have been counting the days, Jean."
"Oh, so have I!" said Jean, looking up with a shy, sweet smile,—Peggy's very own smile. Margaret kissed her again for it. "The last day did seem awfully long, Cousin Margaret—well, Margaret, then! I'm sure I never call you anything but Peggy's Margaret when I think of you. Peggy hasn't come yet?"
"Not yet. She will be here this afternoon, on the three o'clock train. She knows nothing about your coming, Jean. In her very last letter, she was talking about being glad to come here, and so on, and she said the only thing wanting would be you."
"Oh, goody! I'm awfully glad—that she doesn't know, I mean. It will be just lovely to surprise her. Dear old Peg!" Jean relapsed into bashful silence when Margaret took her into the library to greet her uncle; but Mr. Montfort's smile and cordial greeting soon put her at her ease.
"Isn't he just lovely?" she whispered to Margaret, as they went up-stairs. "I was afraid he would be awful, somehow, but he isn't a bit; he's just lovely."
Margaret assented, making a mental note of the fact that this child seemed to have but two adjectives in her vocabulary. "Peggy will see to that!" she said to herself. "Peggy has improved so wonderfully in her English this last year. She will be quicker than I to notice and take up the little mistakes."
This was not strictly true, though modest Margaret meant it so. Peggy certainly had learned much at school, but her teachers had no expectation of her becoming an eminent English scholar.
"I have put you with Peggy," said Margaret, leading the way into the pretty room, hung with red-poppy chintz, where Peggy had spent a few sad and many happy hours. "I thought you would rather be together."
"Oh, yes, indeed! You are awfully kind, Cous—Margaret. I haven't seen Peggy for a year, you know. We missed her awfully at Christmas, of course, but she had a lovely time here; and it would have been awful if she had come home and got the measles, wouldn't it?"