"I am sorry and ashamed," she said. "Of course I ought to be able to teach it, and if I go into a school, of course I shall have to study again and make it up, so that I can. But it never can be possible that triangles should be as interesting as human beings, Peggy."
"A great deal more interesting," Peggy maintained, "when the human beings are dead and buried hundreds of years."
"One word more, and I have done," said poor Margaret. "You used an expression, dear,—old fuddy-duddies, was it? I never heard it before. Do you think it is an elegant expression, Peggy dear?"
"It's as good as I am girl!" said Peggy; and Margaret shut her eyes, and felt despair in her heart. But soon she felt a warm kiss on her forehead, and Peggy was promising to be good, and to try harder, and even to do her best to learn the difference between the two Harolds,—Hardrada and Godwinsson.
And if she would promise to do that, might she just climb up now and see what that nest was, out on the fork there?
Perhaps Rita would come down soon, with her guitar or her embroidery-frame; and they would sing and chatter till the early dinner. Rita's songs were all of love and war, boleros and bull-fights. She sang them with flashing ardour, and the other girls heard with breathless delight, watching the play of colour and feeling, that made her face a living transcript of what she sang. But when she was tired, she would hand the guitar to Margaret, and beg her to sing "something cool, peaceful, sea-green, like yourself, Marguerite!"
"Am I sea-green?" asked Margaret.
"Ah! cherub! you understand me! My blood is in a fever with these songs of Cuba. I want coolness, icy caves, pine-trees in the wind!"
So Margaret would take the guitar, and sing in her calm, smooth contralto the songs her father used to love: songs of the North, that had indeed the sound of the sea and the wind in them.
| "It was all for our rightful king |
| That we left fair Scotland's strand. |
| It was all for our rightful king, |
| We ever saw Irish land, |
| My dear, |
| We ever saw Irish land!" |