Just at that moment a figure came running towards them. It was Bessie, the elder of the Harper girls.
'Margaret, Frances, where have you been? what have you been doing all this time?' she exclaimed. 'We've had ever so many games, and now tea will be ready directly. What are you looking so mournful about, Margaret, and you so excited, Frances? You haven't—oh no, you couldn't have been quarrelling.'
The smile on both faces was sufficient answer—no, certainly they had not been quarrelling!
'What have you been talking about, then?' said Bessie again, and she looked at them with considerable curiosity.
Bessie was two years older than her sister. She was handsomer too, and much stronger. There was a bright, fearless, resolute look about her, very attractive and prepossessing. But she was less intellectual, less thoughtful, more joyous and confident, though tenderly and devotedly unselfish to those she loved, especially to all weak and dependent creatures.
'Margaret has been telling me such interesting things,' began Frances eagerly.
'And Frances has been telling me about—about Lady Myrtle and Robin Redbreast. Just fancy, Bessie, they know her! She was a very, very old friend of their grandmother's.'
And between them the two girls soon put the elder one in possession of all they had been discussing.
Bessie Harper's bright face grew grave; she could not blame her sister and Frances, but still, on the whole, she almost wished the discovery had not been made, though 'it was bound to come some time or other, I suppose,' she reflected.
'I call it a perfect shame!' said Frances, her cheeks flaming up again. 'To think of that horrid old woman having more money than she knows what to do with, and keeping it all to herself, when it really belongs—a good part of it, at least—to your father.'