Margaret's tears were never very near the surface, but she had lived a life so unnatural and so repressed, she had been so entirely without kindness or sympathy for so long, that she broke down now, and sobbed upon good, honest, Jean's broad shoulder, sensible only of the sweetness and comfort of the relief.
"My poor bairn, my poor bairn!" Jean kept on saying, and then, recollecting that she ought not to allow her to give way, she said, "but you'll no be fit to see Miss Grace, and you just a blurred objick," and this reflection also stopped Margaret's tears and caused her to lift up her head and try to compose herself.
"How is my sister? How is Grace, dear Jean?"
"She's no just fit to dance the houlachan," said Jean, gaily, who had her own private way of pronouncing most words, "but she's not that bad. Eh, my dear, come and see her; she's been wearying for you, sair, sair."
Margaret went upstairs, and in another moment the sisters were once more together.
Grace was lying on the sofa, and Margaret found her looking better than she expected. She was a softened edition of the old Grace, still fitful, capricious, but full of tenderness for her sister, whose life she had so completely spoiled.
"Why, darling, have you never been here before?" she asked; "I have sent you so many notes and have had such scanty answers. You never tell me of yourself; you never tell me what I want to know."
"I have so little to say of myself. My husband has been ill, and, since his illness, he cannot bear my going out, and I came to-day because I could slip away."
"But tell me one thing, darling, only one. Why stay with him? Why not leave him?"
"Because of baby; I cannot desert my little one, Grace: and if I left him merely because he is unkind and allows me no liberty and is 'odd,' he would have the right to keep baby, not I, its mother."