And Violet did ask Margaret, who now, grown extremely stout and jolly, had come over from her home in Scotland to serve her beloved Miss Letty once more. The trip to America had been too much for the worthy woman’s contemplation, and when her mistress had gone there, she and the respectable butler Plimpton had made a match of it, and were now the proprietors of a small but extremely cosy hotel on the picturesque shores of Loch Etive. But as soon as she heard that Miss Letty had returned to England for a time, nothing would serve but that she must come to London and attend upon her again,—an idea which entirely met with her husband’s approval. And so here she was, established in the hotel in a room adjoining Miss Letty’s, wearing a smart white apron, and sewing away as if she had never left her situation at all, and as if the six years of her married life that had intervened were nothing but a dream.
“Do I remember Master Boy?” she said now, as Violet asked her the question,—“I should think I do indeed! Just the bonniest wee lad! And Miss Letty was sair fashed about him,—and she would have given her best of all in the world to have got him wi’ her, and adopted him as her own. Ah, she’s a grand leddy! What a wife and mither she would ha’ made to any man gude enough for her!”
“And she loved Boy very much then?” went on Violet, playing abstractedly with a gold chain she always wore, on which Max Nugent had hung a heart of fine rubies and diamonds.
“Ay, that she did!” said Margaret, stitching away at the frill of one of her “leddy’s” silken gowns. “And she loves him still just as much, I’ll be bound. You mark my words, Miss Violet,—I’m pretty sure the dear woman hasna done wi’ Master Boy!” and she nodded her head and pursed up her lips mysteriously.
“You think he will want Miss Letty to help him on in his career perhaps?” said Violet.
“I couldna tell—I canna say!” replied Margaret. “But if ever a lad had feckless parents, it’s this same lad—and if ever a bairnie had a bad start to begin life upon, it’s this same bairnie! You tell me what you think of him, Miss Violet, after ye’ve had a bit look at him?”
“Oh, if he knows you are here, he’ll want to see you himself, surely!” said the girl.
Margaret looked up with a shrewd smile in her kind eyes.
“Don’t ye be thinking of that, Miss Violet,” she said. “There is naebody like myself for kennin’ how soon we’re forgotten by the folks we have loved. I mind me when I used to put Master Boy to bed, he would throw his wee arms round me and say, ‘I’ll never forget ye, Margit,’ and it just pleased me for a while to believe it. But when I married Plimpton, I sent the laddie a bit o’ wedding cake marked ‘from Margit,’ and never a word did I hear o’ the lad or the cake at all. And I was a fule to expect it; for ye see, when he was in Scotland wi’ us, we had a bit few of his old toys, and with them there was one he used to be amazing fond of——”
“I know!” said Violet quickly—“The Cow!”