Despite his assertion of innocence, he has in his pocket a second letter of invitation from Lady Betty for Prue, which he reads with her next day under the Judas-tree while Peggy is away at the workhouse. She comes back a little too soon, before the reading is quite finished, just in time to see Prue stick the note hastily into her pocket. At this gesture her heart sinks—Prue is beginning to look upon her as an enemy.
'You need not hide your letter, Prue. I am not going to ask to see it,' she says, in a wounded voice, either forgetting or omitting to make any salutation to Freddy.
Prue reddens.
'I should not have hidden it, only that I knew it would make you angry,' she answers, with a sort of trembling defiance. 'Lady Betty has invited me again. I cannot help it; it is not my fault.'
Freddy has risen, and, scenting a coming storm, follows his instincts by beginning to edge away.
'How bad of you—you dear Peg!' cries he affectionately, holding out both hands—'to come back just as I am obliged to be off! That is the way you always treat me—is not it, Prue?'
'You needn't go,' replies Margaret, neglecting his hands, and looking rather sternly at him. 'I shall not be here a moment; and we are not going to quarrel, if that is what you are afraid of. Prue, since Lady Betty is so urgent, and you wish it so much, tell her that you will go to her.'
Then she leaves them with a steady step, but when she reaches her own room her tears gush out. That gesture of Prue's hand to her pocket has cut her to the quick; Prue, whose one first impulse through all her seventeen years' span has hitherto been to run to her sister with whatever of good or bad—be it broken head or new doll—fate has brought her. That one small gesture tells her that the old habit is for ever broken, and she cries bitterly at it. She may cry as much as she pleases during the silent fortnight that follows, certain that neither Mink nor the cat will ask her why; but she does not weep again. Through the gossamer-dressed September mornings, and the gold-misted September noons, she lives alone. Alone with her thoughts—thoughts none the less worth thinking perhaps for their new tinge of deep sadness—with her unpretending charities, with Jacob and her hollyhocks. It is a novel experience, since never before in all Prue's little life has she borne to have the child out of her sight for as much as a week.
Three months ago she would have thought it too hard a thing to have asked of her to forego Prue's songs and kisses for a whole fortnight; but of late Prue herself has so entirely robbed their intercourse of its old confident sweetness, has put such a bitter sting into it, that for the first few days after her departure Peggy (albeit with self-reproach) experiences a sense of relief in no longer meeting the small miserable face with its mute and dogged upbraidings. So little does she dread her own company that she avails herself but sparingly even of such society as is within her reach, i.e. that of the Manor and milady, with her spud and frieze-coat; that of the Vicarage with its stocking-basket and its Earthly Paradise. The only visitors of whom she sees much are the little Harboroughs, who still adorn the Manor nurseries, and call upon her almost daily, with that utter absence of misgiving as to being always welcome that few people—and those only the most consummate bores—are able to preserve in later life.
She likes them—the boy best; and even if she herself is not quite in tune for their chatter, there is always the red fox to pant at them, with pretty cunning face and hot wild breath, from behind the wire walls of his house; the pump to wet their clothes, and the stable kittens to scratch them. So no wonder that they come every day. She would enjoy their conversation more if it did not involve so ceaseless a reference to one whom she has neither the need nor the desire to have thus hauled back into her memory. But it seems as if John Talbot had been so inwoven with the very woof of their lives that no anecdote of their little past is complete without it. She could endure it, however, if they confined themselves to anecdotes. It is the perpetual appeal to her for her opinion about him that she finds so trying.