Endowed with an extraordinary superabundance of feeling and sentiment, Margaret was enthusiastic in doing good, and repelled evil, when she encountered it, with a degree of inflexibility amounting to severity. Beautiful beyond all expression, her beauty was never for a moment made the subject of her thoughts. Possessed by nature of a very strong mind, she felt unceasingly, and endured
with restless impatience, and almost without being able to submit, the disadvantages which weakness and conventionalities imposed upon her sex. She possessed all the great qualities of her father, but none of his bright cheerfulness and admirable resignation—fruits of the long-continued exercise of the most exemplary virtue. The poor were always sure of finding in her an earnest and faithful friend; the afflicted, a comforter full of eloquence and sympathy; the vain and presumptuous man, a frigid scorn and piquant irony which concealed from him entirely the knowledge of her true character, replete with integrity, frankness, and simplicity. Scarcely emerged from childhood, Margaret felt she had arrived at mature age. The accuracy and loftiness of her judgment, united to that delicacy and exquisite tact which belong naturally to some women, rendered her worthy of becoming the most intimate and reliable friend of her father, whose entire joy and happiness centred in her alone. Educated by him with extreme care, she was familiar with all the sciences, and several works written by her in Greek and Latin of great purity have come down to us from that period.
“My daughter,” said More, “why distress yourself about me, since I am to remain with you?”
“Father,” answered Margaret, fixing her beautiful dark eyes on his face, “there is something behind all this that you have not told. Why conceal it from me?”
“No, dear daughter, nothing. Your father is old; he desires to leave you no more, to see you always, until the Lord shall call him to himself.”
Seeing Margaret’s eyes fill with tears, Sir Thomas repented immediately
of what he had said, fearing to excite in her the nervous sensibility he had always vainly attempted to moderate.
“Father,” she answered, “let it be as you wish; I ask nothing more.”
“On the contrary, you shall know everything, dear child. God has blessed us; be assured of that. And see how green and fresh our garden looks from here.”
They were coming in view of their house at Chelsea, and soon found themselves opposite the small green gate opening, at the end of the garden, upon a path descending to the river. One of the men, taking a large silver whistle from his belt, blew several shrill notes as a signal to those in the house to come and open the gate for their master. Nobody appeared, however, and the family began to feel surprised, when at length they perceived some short and deformed creature advancing with irregular bounds, breaking the bushes and overturning the pots of flowers that he encountered in his passage.