"Am I seventeen, or thirty-seven?" thought Margaret, as she finally led the way to the dining-room.
CHAPTER IX.
DAY BY DAY.
| "Oh! what a mystery |
| The study is of history!" |
For some time things continued to go smoothly and pleasantly at Fernley. The days slipped away, with nothing special to mark any one, but all bright with flowers and gay with laughter. The three girls were excellent friends, and grew to understand each other better and better. The morning belonged rather to Margaret and Peggy; Rita was always late, and often preferred to have her breakfast brought to her room, a practice of which the other girls disapproved highly. They were always out in the garden by half past eight, with breakfast a thing of the past, and the day before them. The stocking-basket generally came with them, and waited patiently in a corner of the green summer-house while they took their "constitutional," which often consisted of a run through the waving fields, or a walk along the top of the broad stone wall that ran around the garden; or again, a tree-top excursion, as they called it, in the great swing under the chestnut-trees. Then, while they mended their stockings, Margaret would give Peggy a "talk-lesson," the only kind that she was willing to receive, on English history, with an occasional digression to the Trojan war, or the Norse mythology, as the case might be. Peggy detested history, and knew next to nothing of it, and this was a grievous thing to Margaret.
| "First William the Norman, |
| Then William his son; |
| Henry, Stephen and Henry, |
| Then Richard and John," |
had been one of her own nursery rhymes, and she could not understand any one's not thrilling responsive when the great names were spoken that filled her with awe and joy, or with burning resentment.
"But, my dear," she would cry, when Peggy yawned at Canute, and said he was an old stupid, "my dear, think of the place he holds! think of the things he did!"