"Hilda?" repeated Margaret. "I only know Hilda in the 'Marble Faun.'"
"Hildegarde Merryweather; Hildegarde Grahame she used to be. I thought you might possibly have—well, she's my aunt according to the flesh. I wish you did know her!"
"Your aunt? Is she—is she about Uncle John's age? I know so few people, you see. I have lived a very quiet life."
"Oh, no! She—well, I suppose she's a little older than you, but not very much. She married Roger, don't you know. He's my half-uncle all right, but he's ever so many years younger than the Pater, nearer our age, you might almost say; and Hildegarde and the girls, my sisters,—I say! I wish you knew them all, Miss Montfort."
"I wish I did," said Margaret, simply. "There are no girls of my own age near here. Last year I had my cousins, and I miss them so much!"
"Of course you must!" said sympathetic Gerald. "Girls are no end—I—I mean, I like them too, ever so much." He paused, and wished he knew the right thing to say. How pretty and sweet she was! Not like Hilda, of course (Hilda was this young man's ideal of what a girl should be), but with a little quiet way of her own that was very nice. She must have no end of a time of it with these youngsters! He spoke his thought aloud. They were nearing Fernley, and he must leave her soon. "You must be having some difficulty with those youngsters, Miss Montfort. If I could help you any time, I wish you'd let me know. There have always been such a lot of us at home, I'm used to most kinds of children, you see; and I should be ever so glad—"
"'Won't you come in?'"
"Oh, thank you!" said Margaret, gratefully. "I am sure you are very kind; and if you would advise me sometimes—now that Uncle John is away—I should be most grateful. But—I ought to be able to manage them myself, it seems to me, without help. If I can only make them love me!" She looked straight at Gerald, and her dark gray eyes were very wistful in their unconscious appeal.
"I'd like to see 'em not!" said the young man, straightway. "Little beggars! They couldn't help themselves!" He was about to add that he would thrash them handsomely if they did not love her, but pulled himself together, and blushed to his ears, and was only comforted by seeing out of the tail of his eye that the girl was wholly unconscious of his blushes. After all, there was some sense in freckles and sunburn.