CHAPTER VI.
A LESSON IN GEOGRAPHY.
"Margaret!"
"Yes, uncle."
"Can you come here a moment, my dear?"
"Surely, Uncle John. I was looking for you, and could not find you."
Margaret came running in from the garden. Her uncle was sitting in his private study, which opened directly on the garden, and communicated by a staircase in the wall with his bedroom. The study was a pleasant room, lined with books for the most part, but with some valuable pictures, and a great table full of drawers, and several presses or secretaries, filled with papers and family documents of every kind. Mr. John Montfort, recluse though he was, was the head of a large and important family connection. Few of his relatives ever saw him, but most of them were in more or less constant correspondence with him, and he knew all their secrets, though not one of them could boast of knowing his. He was the friend and adviser, the kindly helper, of many a distant cousin who had never met the kind, grave glance of his brown eyes. Peggy Montfort used to say, in the days when it had pleased him to appear as John Strong, the gardener, that it "smoothed her all out," just to look at him; and many people experienced the same feeling on receiving one of his letters. No one had it, however, so strongly as Margaret herself, or so she thought; and it was with a sensation of delightful relief that she answered his call this morning. Mr. Montfort turned round from the great table at which he was sitting, and held out his hand affectionately.
"Come here, my child," he said, "and let me look at you. Look me straight in the eyes; yes, that will do. You are feeling well, Margaret? You look well, I must say."
"Well? Of course, Uncle John! Am I ever anything else? I have never had a day's illness since I came here."