SOME OF MY LITTLE FRIENDS:
MARGARET.
The little friend that you see in the picture is a little girl that I knew long ago. As you can judge from the picture, her father and mother were not what we call gentlefolk. But simple country people as Margaret’s parents were, they had as warm hearts—yes, and as good manners too—as you would meet with anywhere.
Margaret’s father was just an honest English farmer, and her mother a worthy active farmer’s wife, while little Margaret herself was the perfection of a merry country girl. She was up early to help her mother in the morning. She would rise at cock-crow, wash and dress herself, make her own bed, and then kneel down, as we see her in the picture, and say her prayers. And if it was summer, the sun, in rising would cast his slanting rays in at the window, and gild her pretty head the while with his soft light.
I had been very ill, and went down to stay at the farm to get strong and well again. In fact I took a lodging there for a short time. But I already knew the people, for I had once lived in the neighbourhood. It was the month of October when I went down, after having been long confined to my sick room in London; and I can remember now how beautiful the woods looked, as I drove from the station up the hill to the farm-house. The leaves of the oak were already mellowing into bronze; the beeches were changing to a deep orange; and here and there the pale yellow of the chestnut showed in relief against the dark green of the unchanging fir. The whole landscape glowed in the warm lights and shadows of autumn colouring.
The old farm-house was perfect in point of cleanliness and comfort. I soon regained my health and strength, and was beginning to think of returning home again, when the sad event happened which I am going to tell you of.
Little Margaret used to wander in and out, and round about, near her father’s farm, just as she pleased. She was known and loved by everyone, great and small; by the young children particularly, who would run out of their cottages as she passed to see and speak to her. One evening she was returning home across a plot of open ground near the farm, when she saw, drawn up out of the road, one of those houses on wheels which gipsies travel about in. A woman stood outside with a little brown baby in her arms; and Margaret could not pass without saying a word to the baby.