“Oh, I’m not going to send you away, my little Peggy, not till the old man’s gone—a selfish old man. You must be a good girl, and prove me right to everybody concerned. Now, good-night, and run away to your bed; and you can tell John.”
“Good-night, papa. I will be a good girl,” she said, half laughing, with the tears in her eyes, as she had done when she was a child; and she made a little pause when she kissed him, and asked herself whether she should speak to him about Rob Glen, and ask if he would like to see the pictures? Surely to see such pictures would be a pleasure to anybody. But something kept Margaret silent. She could not tell what it was; and in the end she went away to tell John, without a word about her old acquaintance. Down-stairs she could hear Bell already fastening the shutters, and Jeanie passed her on the stair, fresh and smiling, though sleepy, with a “Gude-nicht, Miss Margret.”
“Good-night, Jeanie; and you’ll call me early?” she said; upon which Jeanie shook her head with a soft smile.
“If you were aye as ready to rise as me to cry upon you!”
“I will rise to-morrow,” said Margaret. How good she was going to be to-morrow! Light as a bird she ran down to the old couple down-stairs. “John, papa is ready. You are to go to him this very minute. I stopped on the stair to speak to Jeanie, and papa will be waiting.”
John answered with a grunt and groan. “And me, I’m to pay for it because little miss tarries!”
Bell pushed him out of the kitchen with a laugh. “Gae away with you,” she said. “Miss Margret, my man John would stand steady and be cut in sma’ pieces with a pair o’ scissors sooner than that any harm should come to you. But his bark is aye waur than his bite. And what have you been doing all this night, my bonnie bird? I’ve neither seen your face nor heard your fit upon the stair.”
“Oh, I was thinking,” said Margaret, after a pause; “thinking—”
“Lord bless us and save us, when the like of you begin thinking! And what were you thinking upon, my bonnie dear?”
“Nothing,” said Margaret, musing. She had fallen back into the strain of her usual fanciful thoughts.