"So I will, Meg," he answered, drawing her nearer and keeping his arm about her. "And it is just because I care for you that I want you to go to school, that I want you to learn all that can be taught you. I want your little hands to grow soft, that now are hard with housework for me."

The child's face worked, but she controlled the rising sob.

"Listen, Meg. It may be in five years, it may be in six years, it may be when you are a tall, accomplished young girl of eighteen, I shall come to the school where you are, and--" He paused.

"Take me home to be your housekeeper?" said Meg.

A laugh drifted to his face.

"Better than that. We will be friends, close friends, such friends as never were, if you go to this school," he said.

"You promise?" said the child, holding him with her eyes.

He nodded. "I promise, Meg."

"Then I will go to that school," she said submissively, putting her hand into his.

Until eight o'clock, when she usually said good-night, Meg helped Mr.

Standish to pack up. She asked to be allowed to remain up a little longer, but he refused the pet.i.tion.

"It is not good-by, Meg; it is good-night only," he said cheerily, stroking her head; then stooping, he kissed the child's forehead. "G.o.d bless you, little Meg!"

Meg did not go to bed. She made no pretense to undress. She lay on the floor of her attic all night, letting the solitude of the coming years pa.s.s in antic.i.p.ation over her heart. In the gray of the morning some furtive sounds reached her ears, and she sprang up listening. A few moments after, Mr. Standish, portmanteau in hand, emerged from his room.

A gray little figure stood waiting for him in the dim dawn, as it had waited for him once before. It was Meg, pressing something to her heart.

"My child, I had hoped, I had planned to avoid this for you," he said.

"I hoped you would be asleep."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEG PRESENTS THE OLD FASHION-PLATE TO HER FRIEND.--Page 61.]

The child's lips moved, but she did not speak. Abruptly stretching out the hand that she had held pressed against her bosom she put something into his. It was the fashion-plate that had been to her as her mother's portrait.

"Is that for me, Meg?" he asked.

She nodded.

"I'll keep it safe. I'll give it back to you, Meg, when we meet again,"

he replied, tenderly folding the battered print and laying it inside his pocket-book.

The child kept a stern silence.

"We'll meet again, Meg; I promise you that. Poor little Meg!" he said feelingly. "It is hard for you; but I will write to you--I will write.

No one will ever care for me as you have cared."

He kissed her, and as still she preserved the stern silence of repressed grief he turned quickly away. As he ran down he looked back and saw the child watching him, with her face thrust through the banisters.

He waved his hand to her and smiled. The next moment the hall door clapped below, and from above there came the sound of sobbing in the darkness.

CHAPTER V.

A MYSTERIOUS VISIT.

A few days after, in the early afternoon, as Meg was sitting on the floor in her attic with the bundle of articles given her by Mr. Standish spread out on her lap, the books he had given her on the floor around her, the door opened and Mrs. Browne entered.

Meg had been silent and repellent since her friend's departure. She had lived alone, communing with her grief.

The landlady sat down on the child's bed and began rocking herself backward and forward, uttering faint moans.

Meg looked at her gravely and apparently unmoved.

"What are you crying for?" she asked at last, when Mrs. Browne's moans became too emphatic to be pa.s.sed over in silence.

"I am going to lose you, Meg--after all these years--There's a gentleman downstairs--waiting to take you away. Oh! oh! oh!" moaned Mrs.

Browne.

"A gentleman--what gentleman?" asked Meg with trembling eagerness, a light springing to her eyes, for her thoughts had flown to her only friend.

"A kind gentleman--Mr. Fullbloom--You must remember, Meg, as I always said--Mr. Fullbloom--pays for you regular--regular as quarter-day comes, he pays. Remember, as I always said it--And now he's come to take you away from me--who loves you as a mother."

"Is he coming to take me away to that school?" asked Meg, sitting up straight, speaking in curt and business-like tones.

"Yes, you're to go to a school--a grander school--a ladies' school--and you'll forget me, who loved you like a mother."

Meg did not answer. She began to prepare rapidly for her departure. She was going to the school; and this was the first step toward rejoining Mr. Standish in the future.

She paid no heed to Mrs. Browne's feeble grieving over the shabbiness of her wardrobe, her unmended boots, and to the landlady's repeated injunctions to "speak up for me who has been good to you as a mother to the gentleman." Every week, Mrs. Browne protested, she had meant to buy Meg a pretty dress and hat.

"What do I want with a fine dress at school for? I am going to learn--that's what I am going to do. I am going to be a lady," said Meg severely, locking the writing-case, a present from Mr. Standish, in which she had deposited her bundle of articles, and wrapping her books in brown paper.

"The gentleman says you're to take nothing with you except just what will go in a little bag," said Mrs. Browne; "and I've brought you my best hand-bag."

"I'll not go away without these things," said Meg ardently. "I'll not go to school or nowhere without them."

Mrs. Browne shook her head; but Meg was not to be moved.

A few minutes' later, attired in her Sunday garments, her feet shod in worn boots, Meg, carrying her parcel, went downstairs, followed by Mrs.

Browne. In the best parlor stood the gentleman she had once seen in Mr.

Standish's room, and to whom she had been introduced as the "little girl I spoke to you of."

He still wore a frilled shirt and tapped a silver snuffbox, and he looked at Meg with his head very much on one side.

"Ready to go--ready to go!" he said in a quick chirping voice. "Not crying, eh? not crying?"

Meg disengaged her hand to take the one proffered to her.