“Poor Margaret!” Rose colored a little; she had caught the glance which Margaret had bestowed on her and Fox.
“Poor fiddlesticks!” replied the judge, rising and folding his paper; “she’s made her bed, child, and she must lie on it; that’s the law of life; we reap as we sow.”
Rose looked across at him affectionately, but she was wondering what he thought of William Fox; she had never dared to ask. “It’s a hard law, father,” she said gently, “we all want to be happy.”
“You will be—just in proportion to your right to be,” he retorted calmly; “it’s a matter of the heart anyway, Rose, and not of external matters.”
“I suppose so,” she replied, with a slight sigh; “but one would like to have externals and internals agree, don’t you think?”
The old man laughed pleasantly. “Most of us would,” he admitted, “but we never have our way in this world, not in my observation.”
As he spoke there was a stir in the hall, and a young girl appeared at the drawing-room door.
“It’s Gertrude English,” Rose said; “don’t go yet, father, I’ll take her away.”
But it appeared that the judge had to go to court, and he went out, patting little Miss English on the shoulder as he passed. “We children grow,” he said laughing.
“I wish I’d grown more,” she retorted ruefully; “everybody calls me ‘a little thing,’ and I’m not, really, I’m five feet four.”