"It was kept apart because father wanted to read and write and be quiet," Margaret said.
"Well, there's no one who need read and write now; you can do more useful things, and will be all the better for it; as for being quiet, well, there's others that will want to be quiet sometimes, and it'll do for them. Mr. Garratt is coming over to his dinner on Sundays, and we shall sit there in the afternoon—if we are not taking a walk. Mother is always in the porch, and we don't want you hanging about us."
"I am glad to get away," Margaret said, quickly.
"You do your best to keep his eyes fixed on you, anyway; but you needn't think you'll draw him to yourself; it isn't likely he'd mean anything by an unbeliever."
"I don't want him," Margaret cried, and fled up to the beechwood that stood high behind the farm as though it were the landscape's crown. Here, in some inconsequent manner born of the instinct that only comes to a woman's heart, she waited for Tom Carringford, or for news of him. That happy morning in London had changed the whole current of her thoughts, had put something strange and sweet into her life that she did not attempt to define and hardly knew to be there. But she wanted to see him again—and she waited, dreaming as her mother did, yet differently. He would come, or he would write, and soon; she felt it and knew it. But the days went by, and the weeks, and the first month of her father's absence, and nothing happened. She was a little disappointed, yet thought herself unreasonable, for, of course, he was thinking of his under-secretaryship, building castles concerning his parliamentary career—in Margaret's thoughts he was sure to be prime-minister some day—or going out with his friends; and she thought uneasily of the Lakemans—he had no time to go to Hindhead, or to remember her father's invitation. And why should she expect him to write? He would come, perhaps, when Sir George Stringer was established at the house on the hill.
But of Sir George there was not a sign. Every day, in the early morning, or in the twilight, she hurried through the fields, towards the road on which the church and the garden entrance to his house faced each other on either side; but the gates were always closed, and a chain round them fastened by a padlock showed that as yet he was not expected. Then she came away slowly, and with dull disappointment in her heart, which Hannah's temper and tyranny emphasized till she could hardly bear it. The foundations of life seemed to be giving way—she felt it as she passed the windows of the empty best parlor, or saw her mother, erect still, but older and graver, sitting in the porch. The happiness of home, the dear home of all her life, had waned lately.
"Are you well, mother?" she asked one day, uneasily. "Sometimes I think you are suffering." This was five weeks after Mr. Vincent had started.
"It's nothing," Mrs. Vincent answered. "I'm getting on in years, Margey; at fifty-six aches and pains have a right to take some hold on one. I shall be better when your father returns; perhaps I did a little too much before he went."
"Yes, you did, darling," Margaret answered, kissing the hands—large, capable hands, that not even the rough farm-work had ever made coarse.