"I'll no trouble you with messages. I aye use my pen when need be," she said, very calmly, and hurried off to get him that something to eat which is never a great difficulty in the hands of an experienced cook.
It may be said that she did write to her mistress, as she always called Mrs. Dorriman, that very night, and gave a graphic description of Mr. Sandford's arrival.
As frequently is the case, the pith of her letter lay in the postscript.
"You will be glad to hear, mem, that, though he was most fashious and pernickity, he was not just very rampageous, and he drank his tea and eat up all the toast," wrote Jean, who had never before known him condescend to such simple fare.
After all, Mr. Sandford did not start that night. He reflected, that, as he was anxious, he must not show his anxiety; and also that feeling of indisposition which he did not recognise made him put off his journey till the following day, a postponement which met with Jean's fullest approval. Why people should spend their nights, rumbling and tumbling along, when they might be in their beds, was one of the most surprising things in life to her, and she thought it "wise like" not to do it.
But this postponement made one difference, instead of bursting upon them all as a surprise, Mr. Sandford was expected. The trio were alone, and no one, so far as he could ascertain, was staying there interesting to him.
Mrs. Dorriman was glad he had come. She was always thankful to share any responsibility; and she thought him looking ill—which fact always softened her towards him.
Her feeling for him had, indeed, much changed, and she never thought bitterly of his old misdoings towards her. Time, which softens a grief, heals many a difference; and, though she always had the consciousness of having been hardly used, she constantly found herself making allowances for him, and compassion was beginning to tone down all her sources of irritation against him.
Jean's letter, posted over-night, arrived just after breakfast; the girls were dismayed; they had parted from him with angry feelings, and now, how were they to meet? Margaret, calling Grace in vain to accompany her, set off for a long expedition among the lower hills that crowned the heights behind Lornbay. From high up she obtained a larger view, and, with Tennyson in her hands, with whom she spent all her happiest moments, she prepared to wander far, not sorry to be alone, and feeling secure from the companionship of Mr. Paul Lyons or of any of those common-place, if friendly, women who had by degrees gathered round Mrs. Dorriman and who tried Margaret's patience sorely.
Would a day ever come to her, she often thought with girlish impatience, when the interests of life would be narrowed to a new pattern in cross-stitch or crewel-work, and to the want of taste in some person's way of setting a bow on the side of a cap. These trivial matters lay so far outside anything that contained possible interest to her, that she despised the people who evidently considered them of consequence.