“Sold Charlie’s home!” gasped the girl.
“Certainly. He always wanted me to keep up my music, and I couldn’t be bothered with a house.”
Meg said nothing. “You know, Meg, Charlie would have wished it,” she said somewhat peevishly.
“Yes, Charlie would have wanted you to do just as you wished,” replied Meg drearily. Then suddenly she burst into tears, and throwing her arms around Ada’s neck, cried, “Oh, I can’t bear to see you go! You are all of Charlie that is left to me, and everybody is going from me!”
Ada looked surprised at her burst of emotion, and said patronizingly: “Why, I didn’t know that you cared so much! We people of deeper feelings are sometimes at a loss to understand you frivolous ones!”
The words acted like a tonic on Meg, who dried her eyes, and said with bitter lightness, “You must allow us frivolous ones to mope occasionally. We are not always gay.”
“I suppose not,” said her cousin, eyeing her disapprovingly.
After she had gone Meg went up to the attic where she kept the little trunk containing her mother’s things. Unlocking it, she clothed herself in the dress and apron of which she had spoken to Mrs. Malloy. With the addition the spectacles, the use of which her mother’s near-sightedness had compelled, and the piece of unfinished work, she looked like a child masquerading in grown-up clothes. But no child could have worn the look of absolute despair depicted upon her face.
She sat gazing into vacancy for a while, and then, remembering her game, began to talk: “Margie, dearie, don’t you realize that you are only a light-minded little thing? You must try to be serious, darling, try to have sober thoughts, try to feel as people of deeper natures do.
“And another thing you must remember,—you must not stand in anybody’s way. When you find that you are standing between anyone and the light, just step aside. Never mind about yourself. You are of no consequence. You are just a waif,—you don’t belong anywhere, and don’t belong to anybody—”