'All the same,' I went on, speaking more to myself, perhaps, than to him, 'I wish we were well through it, and your princess safe with her old nurse.'
For I could not have felt comfortable about her, as I have several times said, even if we had not promised to help her. More than that—I do believe she was so determined, that supposing mamma or Mrs. Wylie or any grown-up person had somehow come to know about it, Margaret would have kept to her plan, and perhaps even hurried it on and got into worse trouble.
She needed a lesson; though I still do think, and always shall think, that old Miss Bogle and her new nurse and everybody were not a bit right in the way they tried to manage her.
I hurried home from school double-quick that morning, you may be sure. And Peterkin and I were ready for dinner—hands washed, hair brushed, and all the rest of it—long before the gong sounded.
Mamma looked at us approvingly, I remember, when she came into the dining-room, where we were waiting before the girls and Clement had made their appearance.
'Good boys,' she said, smiling, 'that's how I like to see you. How neat you both look, and down first, too!'
I felt rather a humbug, but I don't believe Peterkin did; he was so completely taken up with the thought of Margaret's escape, and so down-to-the-ground sure that he was doing a most necessary piece of business if she was to be saved from the witch's 'enchantering,' as he would call it.
But as I was older, of course, the mixture of feelings in my mind was a mixture, and I couldn't stand being altogether a humbug.
So I said to mamma—
'It's mostly that we want to go out as soon as ever we've had our dinner; you know you gave us leave to go?'