CHAPTER XII.
THE VOICE OF FERNLEY.
From that night, Susan D. was Margaret's friend and true lover.
She followed her round in the hope of being able to do some little service of love. She brought her flowers, and hunted the fields for the largest and finest berries for her. At any hour of the day, Margaret might feel a little hot hand slide into hers and deposit a handful of warm, moist raspberries or blueberries. Sometimes this bred trouble, as when Merton waylaid his sister, and wrested the hard-won treasures from her for his own refreshment; with the result of shrieks and scuffling, and a final thrashing from his elder brother; or, as when Cousin Sophronia detected the child sidling along with closed palm, and demanded to see what she had. Susan D. resisted stoutly, till at length, yielding to superior strength, she threw the berries on the floor, and trampled them into the carpet. There was a good deal of this kind of thing; but still the change was a blessed one, and Margaret, when she met the beaming look of love in the child's face, and remembered the suspicious scowl that had greeted her only so few days ago, was most thankful, and felt it to be worth any amount of trouble, even to taking the spots out of the carpet, which was a hard thing to do.
"I told you!" said Basil, smiling superior. "I told you, once you got inside, you'd find the kid not at all so bad. I say, Cousin Margaret, you're not a fraidcat, are you?"
"A what, Basil?"
"A fraidcat! Don't you know what a fraidcat is, Cousin Margaret? Seems to me you didn't learn many modern expressions when you were a little girl, did you?"
"Really, Basil, I think I learned all that were necessary," said Margaret, laughing. "I did not learn slang, certainly, nor boy-jargon, and I don't care to take lessons, thank you. Don't you think good, plain English is good enough?"
"Oh, well, it sounds all right from you, 'cause you are you, and you wouldn't match yourself if you didn't talk that way, I suppose. But it would sound silly for a boy to go on so, don't you see?"