'Oh no, dear,' said Frances reassuringly. 'It's not that. It was rather queer, and you see we weren't quite sure at first how Aunt Alison was going to take it. And Jacinth is always rather down upon me for talking too much. But I know I may tell you, for it's quite fixed that you and Bessie are to be my best friends: it's the day-scholars that Aunt Alison doesn't want me to talk much to.'
'Yes,' agreed Margaret, 'I quite understand.'
And then Frances related the whole, Margaret listening intently till almost the end.
She was in a fever, poor child, and from no selfish motive assuredly, to hear more about the mysterious house. But she restrained herself, scrupulously careful in no way to force the other's confidence.
'When I said what Robin Redbreast looked like from the inside, I meant from inside the gates,' began Frances, after a moment or two's reflection. For she was scrupulously truthful. 'I've not been inside the house—not farther than the porch. But the porch is like a little room, it is so pretty. I'll tell you how it all was; you may tell Bessie, but not any one else, because, you see, there's quite a story about it.'
And then Frances related the whole, Margaret listening intently till almost the end, when the little narrator, stopping for a moment to take breath, after 'So you see our grandmother was her very dearest friend, and she really seemed as if she could scarcely bear to let Jacinth go, and—isn't it like a real story?' saw, to her surprise, that her hearer's face, instead of being rosier than usual, had now grown quite pale.
'Why, Margaret, what's the matter? You look as if I had been telling you a ghost-story, you're so white,' she exclaimed.
Margaret gave a little gasp.