The youngest princess
Date: 2026-08-08T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Grandmothers -- Juvenile fiction; Cousins -- Juvenile fiction; Generosity -- Juvenile fiction

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Title: The youngest princess
or, Little means to big ends

Author: Jennie Chappell

Release date: August 8, 2026 [eBook #79303]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Blackie & Son, Limited, 1890

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79303

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNGEST PRINCESS ***

Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.

THE YOUNGEST PRINCESS:

OR

LITTLE MEANS TO BIG ENDS.

BY

JENNIE CHAPPELL

Author of "Berne's Bargain;" "Little Radiance;"
"The Man of the Family;" &c.

Lucem Libris • Disseminumus.

LONDON:

BLACKIE & SON, LIMITED, 49 OLD BAILEY, E.C.

GLASGOW, EDINBURGH, AND DUBLIN.

CONTENTS.

————

Chap.

I. MINNIE, MAUD, AND MARGERIE

II. DESERTED

III. EXPLANATIONS

IV. ANXIOUS TIMES

V. MARGERIE'S ADVENTURE

VI. BLACK-EYED AND BAREFOOT

VII. GRANDMOTHER

VIII. AWAY FROM HOME

IX. A MYSTERY

X. THE COAL-CELLAR WINDOW

XI. "NED'S ENOUGH!"

XII. A BRAVE CONFESSION

XIII. SITTING ON A PLANK

XIV. REUNION

THE YOUNGEST PRINCESS.

CHAPTER I.

MINNIE, MAUD, AND MARGERIE.

OUT in the quiet street the soft, cold snow lay thick; the round middle bed in the small front garden of Briar Cottage gleamed smooth and white in the gathering dusk like the top of a giant Twelfth-cake; the path was hidden, the bushes were loaded, the windowsill was piled high with a downy drift, yet the crystal flakes were still falling—falling—falling. Silently, ceaselessly they floated by millions through the breathless air, that was strangely lightened by their whiteness, and there were millions more to come. Long afterwards, that January evening which was then closing in was remembered as "the night of the great snowstorm."

Within the crimson-curtained window that made a spot of glowing radiance in the weird, pale, out-of-door gloaming, the firelight was ruddy, the shadows deep and soft. One of three small figures cosily huddled together on the rug thrust the poker into the heart of the biggest lump of coal, and then—! What a sudden leaping and dancing of the freed flame-sprites, what a mingling and bobbing of bright and dark in the corners of the room, what responsive gleams from spotless table-cloth and flashing tea-pot and glittering cups and spoons! Not to speak of the softer shining of three golden heads and the sparkle of six starry eyes. Soon the illumination grew more steady.

"Go on reading now, Maudie," begged Minnie, the eldest of the three. "Read us that piece of poetry about 'The King's Daughters,'—it looks pretty. Father must be home, I should think, by the time you have done."

Maud—studious, twelve year old Maud—lifted a book that was lying at her feet, and turning so that the amber glow might irradiate the open page, read in a sweet, precise voice, but with little or no feeling, the graceful story of the three young princesses, who—

"' . . . 'Neath the palace windows straying,
Had fallen into earnest talk that put an end to playing;—'"

and of how these little ladies vied with one another in expressing the greatest love for the king, their father.

"'It is I who love our father best,' the eldest daughter said;
'I am the oldest princess,' and her pretty face grew red;
'What is there none can do without? I love him more than bread.'"

The second princess, despising so poor a comparison, declared, (they didn't wear the blue ribbon in that far country!)—

"'I love him more than wine!'"

Then came the turn of "the little youngest daughter, with her eyes of steadfast gray," and she, as many of my readers know, aroused the derisive laughter of the other two by asserting only that she loved him "more than 'salt!'"

The king, too, who overheard them, was grieved that he should be thus lightly held in the affections of his favourite child. But the cook, who also had been listening, decided to prove to his master that this "little quiet thing" knew more than either of her sisters. So, by and by, at dinner-time, every dish came on the table "minus" salt.

The surprise and displeasure of the king, who yet could not discover what was wrong, and the subsequent explanation by the youngest daughter, were very prettily told in the verses Maud read. The last one ran as follows:

"'Great love through smallest channels will find its surest way;
It waits not state occasions, which may not come, or may;
It comforts and it blesses hour by hour and day by day.'"

"I wonder why it is always the 'youngest' princess who says and does the clever things?" observed Minnie in a somewhat dissatisfied tone, when Maud had finished. Minnie had already entered her teens, and was enjoying the first flush of dignity which that stage of advancement confers.

"Because it is only a story, I suppose; and it wouldn't do for stories to be too like real," said Maud, who appeared to have a rather poor opinion of the verisimilitude of fiction generally.

"And there's always three of them, isn't there?" said little Margerie. "Just three. Suppose 'we' all had to choose something, or say something."

"You wouldn't distinguish yourself much," observed Minnie.

"No, I expect Maud would be the best. Suppose you had to tell how much you loved our father," continued Margerie, addressing the reader, "what would you say you liked him better than?"

"The last new story!" answered Minnie for her sister. "Maud has always got her nose in a book."

"'You' would say the last new fashion!" retorted Maud. "Minnie has always got her nose in the glass."

"I should be sorry to see myself there without it," laughed Minnie, who, though she had a knack of upsetting other people's tempers, was generally good-humoured herself.

"After all," remarked Margerie, reflectively gazing into the fire as she sat on a low stool, elbows on knees, and her round little face resting in the palms of her hands, "the youngest is very often the worst. See what a torment the littlest Symmons is."

"Positive little, comparative less, superlative least," quoted Maud, didactically.

"Well, then, the least Symmons.—Oh, Maud, I don't believe that's right!—She's always crying and screaming about something or other."

"That's because the little and the less Symmonses have always been made to give her all her own way, just because she is the least," said Minnie.

"Don't be ridiculous!" said Maud, rather crossly.

"And there was father's youngest brother, too," pursued Margerie, who seldom heeded these frequent passages of arms between her elders. "Going and running away from home like he did."

"That was chiefly grandma's fault, though," remarked Maud. "Mother says so. She was so dreadfully strict and peculiar."

"She must have been an awfully exacting kind of person," said Minnie, "to have quarrelled with father on such slight grounds."

"She couldn't really have not liked mother, could she?" questioned Margerie. "Nobody could help loving her, I should think."

"It was jealousy," answered Maud. "When Tom, the middle one of the three, was dead, and after Harry had run away, all her affections were wrapped up in father. And she thought he would keep single and let her be first with him all his life. So when father got acquainted with mother and wanted to marry her, she was as angry as could be. She would give him up altogether rather than share him with anyone else."

"Funny sort of love, wasn't it?" said Margerie. "You would have thought that if she cared for him so very much, she would have been glad for somebody else to be fond of him too, especially anybody like mother."

"And he asked her to come and live with them and all," added Minnie. "He would have given her a nice room in his house, and made her as comfortable as could be, but she wouldn't. I'm glad enough she didn't, though. What a time of it we should have had with her!"

"Mother wouldn't have let her hurt us," said Margerie. "I think it is very sad for poor father to lose his own mother like that; because he is fond of her, and she was very good to him until he got married. And it is as bad as having her die, almost, not to know anything about her, or ever to hear from her, and not even to know where she lives."

"Mother says it all comes of selfishness," observed Maud. "If grandma had loved father truly, she would have cared ever so much more for him to have a nice, good wife to make him happy than to keep him all to herself. And I'm sure she can't feel satisfied to be estranged like this."

"No, she has punished herself the most, like proud and selfish people always do," said Minnie. "Here comes mother!"

CHAPTER II.

DESERTED!

"A QUARTER to six, and father not home yet!" exclaimed Mrs. Grace, glancing at the clock as she struck a match for the gas. "What can be keeping him?"

She was a rather short, rather stout lady, with wavy light brown hair, large sweet gray eyes, and a face that would be pretty all her life long, for love and kindliness and gentle mirth gave expression to every line. Margerie was the most like her of the three little girls.

The moment the light came, Maud reopened her book, Minnie stood up to "tidivate" a pet curl on her forehead by the chimney glass, and Margerie, hanging herself basket-fashion on her mother's arm, pressed a soft cheek against her shoulder with a look that said, "How nice it is to have someone to cuddle!"

"Perhaps father lost the train," suggested Minnie, pulling out and tying afresh the smart little bow of pink ribbon at her throat.

Minnie would have been, with her shining fair hair and delicate complexion, an extremely attractive looking girl, but her little self-conscious airs and graces spoilt it all. She seemed never to forget that she was pretty, and in consequence, other people found it difficult to remember.

"Traffic may be delayed by the drifts of snow," observed Mrs. Grace. "I think we may as well have tea, girls."

"Let's wait just five minutes longer," pleaded Margerie. "Father always likes to have tea with us on his early evening. He is sure to get home if he can."

"The next train will be in at three minutes past six," said Minnie. "That's two trains later than he usually is on a Thursday evening."

"That will be three—eight—thirteen minutes longer," observed Margerie; "only thirteen, mother. And I can be making some toast, can't I? Father is so fond of my toast with all the crust cut off."

"Very well," smiled Mrs. Grace, well pleased, and she whisked out her stocking-basket wherewith to improve the interval. Maud, buried in her book, was lost to all around, oblivious of tea, and unconscious that any discussion whatever had been taking place.

"There!" cried Margerie, with uplifted finger, as she stood her fourth delicately-browned slice in the china rack. "That's the train coming in now; don't you hear it? It will only take father two minutes to get from the station to our door."

"You might allow him half a minute extra on account of the weather," suggested Minnie.

"Yes, to be sure," Margerie gravely agreed. And seating herself on the corner of a chair with her toasting-fork held trident-fashion, like a small Britannia, she fixed her eyes upon the dial of the time-piece.

It was probably because their father was already overdue, and they had worked themselves up into an unusual state of expectancy by so closely calculating the time, but never in her life before had Margerie Grace watched the clock with anything like the nervous anxiety she did then.

"Half a minute is gone," she said. "He's out of the train and up the stairs. Now he's getting past the ticket man. Now he's putting up his umbrella at the door."

Years afterwards she still recollected the peculiar thrill of those almost breathless moments.

"He must have turned our corner by this time, but we sha'n't be able to hear his footsteps till he gets quite close, because of the snow."

She jumped from her chair in a feverish kind of way, and ran to the window. Parting the red curtains, she looked out. Nothing could she discern through the veil of white flakes that were falling, if possible, more thickly than ever in the darkness. Every moment it seemed that the muffled thud of footsteps must reach her ear, and the welcome form take shape amid that strange chaos without. But eye and ear were alike strained in vain.

"Put the curtain down, Margie dear; there is such a draught," said her mother at length.

Margerie obeyed. The clock was pointing to seventeen minutes past six. The child slowly and silently came back to the fireside, then to everyone's surprise suddenly burst into tears.

"My dear child!" exclaimed Mrs. Grace. "You must not be so much upset about a little thing. Father has been detained at the office, no doubt. If you set your heart so upon things turning out just as you expect, you are sure to meet with disappointment."

"What is the matter with Margie?" asked Maud, coming out of the realm of fiction with the dazed air of a person awaking from a dream.

"She made sure father would come by the 6.3 train, and he hasn't," answered Minnie.

"That was just the way to keep him away," said Maud sententiously. "The things we make so sure of, are the very things that never happen. I've noticed it over and over again."

"Quite so," rejoined teasing Minnie. "You seem to be making sure that by reading a storybook all this evening you'll keep top of the French class to-morrow."

"I won't make sure again," said Margerie, wiping her eyes—she hardly knew herself what had brought that irrepressible gush of tears; "and then perhaps he'll come."

But the next train, and the next, and still another—seven o'clock, half-past seven, eight o'clock came, and yet Mr. Grace had not returned.

His wife herself was beginning to feel no small anxiety about him, for as a rule his hours were most regular. But she would not let the children see how much she was troubled.

Nine year old Margerie, after fruitless protests, went to bed as usual at eight o'clock, her sisters an hour later.

She was still awake when they came up. "Father hasn't come home?" she said.

"No. I can see mother is getting to feel awfully worried about his being so late," replied Minnie. "I wanted to sit up and keep her company, but she wouldn't let me. It is dreadful to think of father being out somewhere in that lonely snow! I feel almost as if we oughtn't to go to bed and leave him."

"Hush!" said Maud. "You'll make Margie cry again."

Margerie's eyes were filling with tears, but she said: "God is out in the snow, though, isn't He? Just the same as in here. Perhaps more even, because of people wanting Him more."

Like a little prophetess she had spoken a word of comfort to them all, and resting on it as on a pillow soft and firm, the three sisters soon fell asleep. The love and power of our Father pervades every inch of the universe; it must be so, or He could not be God. He was with everybody's dear ones out in that terrible storm, He was guarding the children under their safe home-roof, He was sustaining the trembling watcher in the room below. But oh! the loneliness, the fear-filled stillness of the house when the maid too had gone up to her attic, and midnight drew on, and Mrs. Grace was the only one awake! And still her husband did not come.

Early in the small hours Maud awoke with the toothache. She bore it quietly for some time, hearing the clock strike two, meanwhile. But as it did not get better and she could not go to sleep, she slipped out of bed, wrapped herself in a shawl, and tip-toed to her mother's chamber-door. She had no doubt that both her parents were by this time asleep within.

She tapped, but received no answer. She tapped again. She opened the door a little way and said, "Mother!"

She repeated the word a little louder—when before had it failed to meet with a ready response?—but all was silence. She peeped in. The blinds were still up, and the pallid gleam from the snow outside fell upon a smooth and vacant bed. No one was there!

A strange terror at her heart frightening the toothache away, she sped with trembling limbs down the stairs. The lower part of the house was in total darkness. The parlour door stood open; the gas was turned down; a dull red spot indicated the position of the grate, but the dying ashes seemed to have been untended for hours.

"Mother!" she cried aloud, in a horror of desertedness. "Mother! 'Mother!'"

Not a sound came in response but the weird moan of the snow-bringing wind, and the soft pat of great icy flakes against the pane. Even the clock had stopped, and the house was as silent as a tomb.

CHAPTER III.

EXPLANATIONS.

NEVER will Maud forget the unutterable sense of desolation that swallowed her up at that moment of realizing that her mother was nowhere within call; that she had left them, and gone out into the woeful storm, out alone, as the girl at first believed, to seek their missing father.

Minnie, awakened in terror by Maud's last piercing cry of "Mother!" met her white and trembling on the landing as she went back to the bed-room.

"Oh, Maud, what is it? What is the matter?" she distressfully questioned.

"Mother's gone!"

"Gone! Gone where? You must have been dreaming, child!" exclaimed the elder girl.

"I've not. I wish I was!" answered Maud between her chattering teeth. "Father has never been home—their room is empty—and now I can't find mother!"

Shivering though she was with cold and fright, poor Maud sat down on the top stair, and began to cry.

"Sh-sh! Don't make a noise; go back to bed both of you!" said the voice of Ellen the servant from above. "You'll catch your deaths standing out there."

"Where's mother, then?"

"Gone to the hospital, to see your pa. Go right back into bed, now, if you want me to tell you. Lawkamussy, what a night I'm having! We shall all be laid up to-morrow."

Thus adjured, the girls huddled down beneath the bed-clothes again.

"What's happened to father? What hospital? Has he had an accident?" they queried breathlessly.

"Hush now! Don't wake your poor little sister," said Ellen in a loud whisper. "Let her sleep on in peace, if she may. Your ma came up to me," continued the girl, seating herself on the side of the bed, "just as I was dropping off to sleep—near upon twelve it was, for somehow I couldn't forget myself, try all I might, which isn't like me, particular after a hironin' day—and says that a gentleman from St. Mercy's Hospital had come to tell her as how your pa had met with a haccident, and been took there, and there was just time for her to catch the last train."

"To go to him! Oh, Ellen, is he much hurt?" asked the girls in tones of dread. "How did it happen? When? Where?"

"I don't know no more than I've told you," said the maid. "Your ma was off again like a shot, but as quiet as a mouse.

"'I do hope those poor children won't wake,' she said.

"And now I am going to bed again," concluded Ellen. "I declare every bone in my body's a-shakin'. Get to sleep again as fast as you can. It's no manner of use for you to go frettin' and making yourselves ill."

"Oh, don't go yet, Ellen!" begged Maud, clutching the girl's sleeve. "Do you think it's anything very serious?"

"Well, I should reckon it is by their sending for your ma at twelve o'clock at night, and such a night as this."

"Oh, what 'shall' we do? Whatever shall we do?" wailed Minnie.

"Go to sleep again, I tell you, and not keep me standin' here while my very feet freeze to the floor!" returned Ellen, with not wholly inexcusable brusqueness. "I've told you all I know; so, good-night!"

And away she sped.

Little Margerie had lain undisturbed through it all; her soft, regular breathing telling of peaceful sleep.

"Oh! Isn't it 'dreadful?' Oh, Maudie, what shall we do?" said Minnie again, as the sisters clung together. "What 'can' have happened to father? Fancy poor dear mother being fetched to go to him like that! Hark at the wind! Oh, Maudie, I do wish I'd helped mother mend the stockings last night instead of doing up that lace thing!"

"I wish I'd gone and helped father on with his greatcoat in the morning instead of sticking over the fire reading!" rejoined Maud. "And now, perhaps, he'll ne-ever want his greatcoat again!"

And overcome with these self-reproachful recollections—such as ever cut the most deeply of all in times of trouble—the girls mingled their tears and sobs in each other's arms.

"We haven't been nearly as good to father and mother as we ought, have we?" whispered Minnie, still burdened by the thought of admonitions disregarded and duties left undone. "If only God will have mercy on us, and let them both come safe back to us, we will be better—won't we, Maudie?"

"Yes," answered Maud. Then she suggested:

"Let's say the Lord's Prayer together, Minnie. And—and that one, 'Lighten our darkness;' shall we?"

So, holding fast each other's hands, they murmured together in broken whispers these brief and simple prayers, adding of their own accord to the evening collect the names of those precious parents for whom the "perils and dangers" of that night seemed to their small hearts so fearsome and great.

Then by and by, they once more forgot their anxieties in slumber.

The morning dawned clear, cold, and dazzlingly white. Very comfortless and empty looked the parlour when the sisters went downstairs, albeit the breakfast was all laid, and a blazing fire strove to warm the flood of blue-shadowed light that poured in from the snow-mantled outer world.

"I don't want any breakfast," said Margerie tearfully; "I want mother!"

"Oh, you must eat something, dearie; I'm going to," returned Minnie, beginning to act upon last night's good resolution by putting on a cheerful air for the sake of her little sister. "It would worry poor mother dreadfully if she thought we neglected ourselves because she isn't here to see after us."

"I wonder if father is able to eat any breakfast," was Margerie's next remark, as with unwilling throat she gulped down scarcely-tasted bites of bread and marmalade.

Minnie silently wiped her eyes, and neither of the sisters made any reply.

"Come, Maudie," said Minnie presently, "your coffee is poured out."

Maud was standing at the window gazing with wide sad eyes and drooping mouth at the pall-like waste of snow that reflected a cold, white light on her already pallid face. Suddenly, however, even as Minnie spoke, her countenance became radiant with a brightness from within.

"Here's mother!" she cried.

They ran hurriedly to the door.

"Oh, mother—mother, 'dear!'" and six eager arms embraced that weary form. "Oh, mother! It is good to have you back. How is father?"

"My poor dears, how cruel it seemed to desert you!" said Mrs. Grace sinking down on the first chair she found. "You didn't know it till this morning, did you?"

"Maud and I woke in the night, and Ellen told us," answered Minnie briefly. "Mother, dearest, what has happened to father?"

"He had a fall at a railway-station coming home last night," replied Mrs. Grace, in a voice which she strove to keep steady.

Margerie was untying her bonnet-strings, and tenderly smoothing her wind-tossed hair.

"It was in the City. I think the snow must have frozen on the heels of his boots. He fell from the top to the bottom of a flight of steps."

"Oh, mother! Is he—is he 'much' hurt?"

"He was insensible for some hours—that is how it was they could not let us know any sooner. He did not happen to have a card or anything about him. As soon as he became conscious for a little while, he managed to tell them where he lived."

"Isn't he conscious now?" asked Maud, catching apprehensively at what was implied in her mother's words.

"Not when I came away. I want to get back again as soon as possible. But," added Mrs. Grace with a tearful smile, "I felt I must come and peep at my three poor deserted chicks."

"Mother, darling, drink this; it's nice and sweet," said Margerie, holding a cup of coffee to her mother's lips, while she cuddled her dear head so close that to comply with the request was impossible. "And I'll make you a slice of my very best toast with all the crust cut off."

CHAPTER IV.

ANXIOUS TIMES.

FOR days and weeks the three girls and their mother lived in a state of the greatest anxiety. Mr. Grace had sustained injuries of so severe a character that the hospital authorities could not allow him to be removed to his home, much as his wife would have desired to have him under her own sole care. Mrs. Grace spent her whole time, therefore, in a sort of hopeless endeavour to be in two places at once. When sitting with her husband in the private room at St. Mercy's which she had engaged for his better accommodation, more than half her thoughts were with her girls at home. When spending a few hours at Briar Cottage, setting right the things which inevitably went wrong in her absence, and preparing again to leave them, her heart was yearning towards the precious invalid to whom her presence, she knew, was essential comfort and rest.

Between these conflicting cares, pulling her, as they did, in opposite directions, the poor lady found herself at length on the verge of an illness which threatened to hinder her from the performance of either duty. Then, and not till then, did she realize that she had been, albeit half unconsciously, trying to do what is beyond the power of any human being, and what God would never have us do. More strength than the actual work demanded of her, consumed, had been wasted, in useless worry; no wonder she so nearly broke down.

Mothers and fathers are but children of the great Father above, and are learning of Him as long as they live. Mrs. Grace received a lesson at this time which she never afterwards forgot. She saw where her mistake had been, and seeking help from above strove to cease fretting, and while doing her best wherever she might be, to leave all other care to God. Then her fevered brain grew cooler, her nerves once more regained their wonted firmness, and she was able to do for all her dear ones everything that was required.

"If you will but profit by my experience, girls," she told her daughters, "you may rely upon it that we never need try to do more than we can. Only let us make sure that we are calmly and faithfully fulfilling our present duty, and we may be quite content to abandon to the Infinite care everything beside."

The sisters, too, learned much during that season of trouble. The servant was a steady young woman, and did by them in the absence of superintendence as well as could possibly be expected. But for all that, they missed their mother sorely. Never had they half appreciated her tender and unfailing care until for a time they had to do without it. But that they were good girls in the main is proved by the fact that they became more scrupulously obedient to the known wishes of their parents, and more solicitous for each other when thus left to themselves than ever they had been before when helped by constant reminding.

Maud always now changed her damp boots directly she came in—a troublesome point with her—lest she should catch cold and add to her mother's trouble, and never once took a book to bed with her. Minnie, on her part, no longer sat up in her room when she ought to have been asleep, trying new ways of doing her hair. This was a weakness to which she frequently gave way, when Mrs. Grace was at home to come up and chide her for having the candle so long burning. But on the nights that mother was away, she would not have done so for the world. They both, too, were very good to little Margerie, and she tried not to rebel against an occasional approach to amiable tyranny which their well-meant endeavours took.

But the best was that each and all were drawn towards their heavenly Father as they had scarcely imagined possible until now. In the loneliness, especially, of going to bed without a parent's tender "good-night" kiss, the comfort of kneeling down with their arms around each other, in the presence of a love that neither slumbers nor sleeps, was such that none but those who have experienced it can know. It was worth more than all the grief and suspense, and well-nigh orphaned feeling of that sad time, to realize the blessed truth of the Lord's pity for, and nearness to, all who are suffering and sad. And of the three, Margerie, because herself the most pitiful and loving, knew it the most.

It was not until nearly the end of March that Mr. Grace was allowed to return to his own home. Even then, he was but as a wreck of his former self: so hollow his eyes and wasted his cheeks, so pale and thin his hands. There had been only a suspicion of gray in his hair and beard when the year began, now there were more white hairs visible than brown; and his once firm, elastic footstep tottered as he walked from the cab at the gate of Briar Cottage to the front door.

No one was more startled and shocked at this sorrowful change than the girls' brother Jamie, a lad of about sixteen, who, as he was apprenticed to a mathematical instrument maker on the other side of London, lived away from home, and has had no occasion to figure in our story hitherto.

"It will be a terrible while before father is able to go to business again, I should think," the boy observed, looking at the question from the point of view which presented itself most prominently to his mind. "Did the doctor say how long?"

"He distinctly said that your father must not attempt the slightest exertion for at least another two months," replied Mrs. Grace with a sigh. "And it seems doubtful whether he will even then be equal to his former occupation."

Jamie was silent for a few minutes. He knew enough to be aware what such delay might mean.

Then he said: "But his employers are willing to wait for him, aren't they?"

"They have done so until now, and have shown great consideration in many ways. But when they hear how uncertain his return to business appears to be, I fear they may find it necessary to get someone else to permanently fill his vacant place."

"But they won't hear unless father tells them," objected Jamie. "If they still think that there is a prospect of his going back soon, they might keep the post open for him."

Mrs. Grace shook her head decisively. "Your father would not think that right, I am sure," she said. "He intends, if well enough, to write to the principal to-morrow, and inform him of the exact state of affairs. Then the firm will be able to act as they think best in the matter."

"Mother," said Jamie after another pause, during which he had been thoughtfully examining the end of a pen-holder, "is that what people would call 'prudent?' If father lets this situation go, he may, when he gets well, have a great deal of trouble to get another as good."

"That is very possible, Jamie, and no one is more keenly aware of it than your dear father. But you know it is his aim in all things to 'seek "first" the kingdom of God and His righteousness,' and no deception for selfish ends will work with that—not the very smallest. The kingdom of God is 'truth,' and your father will tell the exact truth, giving a faithful and accurate representation of his case, and leave the preservation of this situation or the obtaining of another to Him whose service he feels to be his only duty."

It proved even as the Graces had feared. The sick man's employers, on learning how slow was his progress towards health and how doubtful the prospect that he would ever completely recover from the severe injuries which he had sustained, decided with many genuine regrets that they would be compelled to find someone else to take his place.

There is no denying that this was a severe blow. And prepared for it as Mr. Grace had believed himself to be, the shock caused a serious relapse in his condition which the most assiduous attention on the part of his wife and daughters—even a constant supply of Margerie's famous toast "with the crust cut off"—was powerless to avert.

What were they to do? With the breadwinner laid aside, and instead of a regular income, a continual extra expense in the shape of doctor's bills and luxuries for the sick man.

"Do you know, Maud," said Minnie one night, as she twisted her front hair into a row of little curl-papers before going to bed, "I've been thinking."

"What about?"

"About father and mother and all of us. And about father losing his situation, and—and, Maudie, he doesn't seem to get a bit stronger, that I can see."

"He looks very bad," agreed Maud gravely.

"And he must have things—nourishing things, and all that, you know."

"Yes, of course."

"And they cost money."

"Of course they do."

"And so do other things," pursued Minnie, making a neat little paper parcel of the last tip of hair. "And," she concluded, giving the ends a final screw up, and finishing off with an emphatic pat, "one of the most expensive is Ellen."

"But mother couldn't do without her," said Maud, looking surprised.

"I'm thirteen and five months old," observed Minnie slowly, "and you're twelve and three months. That's twenty-five and eight months between us. Ellen is only twenty-four."

"O-oh, I see!" rejoined Maud, catching her sister's meaning, fancifully though she chose to express it. "And," she added, laughing at her own continuance of the whim, "I take fives in gloves, and you take four-and-a-half. That's nine-and-a-half, whereas Ellen wears only sevens—not to speak of the advantage of two pairs of hands instead of one."

"You stand-under?" queried Minnie.

"I do."

"Are you willing to mention it to mother?"

"I—don't—know," answered Maud reflectively. "I'll think about it. Give me till to-morrow evening, and I'll let you know."

"I think we might," said Minnie. "With perhaps a charwoman now and then. And see what a saving it would be!"

It was on the morning following this talk, while the subject Minnie had mooted was still under Maud's consideration, that Margerie met with a rather curious adventure, the importance of which she at the time but little guessed.

CHAPTER V.

MARGERIE'S ADVENTURE.

IT was on a bright, changeful April afternoon—a half-holiday, by the way—that Margerie Grace was sent by her mother to order a parcel of groceries.

The shop was a large and popular one, and several customers, both grown-up and juvenile, were waiting to be attended to. Margerie had been taught that it is unfair (and therefore unladylike) to attempt to get served out of one's turn, so she stood aside for a while, and amused herself by looking at the gay picture advertisements, and ornamental arrangements of pickle jars and jam-pots, with which the walls were lined.

She was just gazing with wonder and admiration at a gorgeously-coloured show-card, which set forth the merits of a new baking-powder by representing a procession of very small children, each bearing aloft some marvellous achievement in the way of tart or cake—how lovely if 'she' could buy a packet and make a dear little loaf for father's tea!—when someone rather imperatively pushed her out of the way with a rolled-up umbrella, and went past her to the counter.

The umbrella was somewhat remarkable, bearing in shape a striking resemblance to a "Cos" lettuce, and Margerie naturally turned to look at its proprietor.

She was a little old lady in a dark cloak—so little that she was really not much taller than the child herself, and so upright that Margerie could not help being reminded of a china extinguisher in the form of a tiny woman which graced their bed-room mantelpiece at home. She, moreover, wore a very big black velvet bonnet, which viewed from behind—so large and round was the crown—looked like one end of an old-fashioned sofa-pillow. Margerie felt moved by an unaccountable curiosity to see the face inside, and presently managed to get into a position whence she could catch a sideway peep.

It was scarcely an attractive countenance. Perhaps, without being unkind—as none of my readers actually know the lady—I may admit that it was rather the reverse, being decidedly large for the size of the figure it surmounted, very yellow, very much wrinkled, and very thin. Thick iron-gray hair was plastered down "window-curtain" fashion close to the corners of the eyes, the very pronounced nose was inclined to a reddish-purple hue at the tip, and quite a moustache of gray hair hung about the long, hard-set upper lip. A greater contrast to the faces Margerie was accustomed to see about her in her home could scarcely be imagined. She always felt sorry for people who were very plain, and unconsciously heaved a real sigh.

The old lady looked sharply round. Her hollow eyes were large, black, and mournful-looking.

Margerie, knowing what her own thoughts had been, coloured beneath their gaze. She was quite glad that the bulgy umbrella at that moment falling down gave her an opportunity of hiding her face as she stooped to pick it up, and also of doing something to make up for thinking the poor old lady ugly. She wiped the sawdust from its dingy folds with her own little handkerchief before restoring it to the owner.

"Thank you, child," said the old lady rather brusquely, and stared at the little girl with her great owl-like eyes until the latter felt as if she were going to be swallowed up.

Margerie gave her order while the old lady was counting her change, which seemed to take her a long time, and they left the shop almost together.

It was then that a rather strange thing happened, or rather began happening. Mrs. Grace had told Margerie that she need not hurry back, but, as it was such a fine day, might take "a run round" before going home. So she thought she would return by way of the Park, which was near at hand.

But though she skipped about, ran back and forth, loitered to watch the swans fed, and stood for some time to look at the tennis-players, that strange old lady kept always in sight. She actually seemed to be following her, and the idea made Margerie rather uncomfortable. She was not exactly frightened; one does not generally feel afraid in broad daylight under a sunny sky. But her pursuer was very peculiar-looking—not unlike a witch in a fairy-tale—and it was not nice. So she resolved to go home. She would run all the way, she thought, and leave the old lady far behind.

But how it was I cannot tell; perhaps, once in the streets again, the gay shop-windows tempted the little girl to linger, but so it was that when she by and by glanced backward once more, there was the odd figure in the long cloak and big bonnet just coming round the corner.

Margerie had a halfpenny to spend, and a thought struck her. She would go into a sweetmeat shop that was close at hand, and not come out again until the old lady had gone past, so she would not be able to follow her any more. This plan she contrived to carry out, and when she emerged from the shop, she had the satisfaction of seeing the ancient dame walking before her instead of behind.

The road they were in was one of those thoroughfares one sometimes finds in the suburbs of London, where shops and places of business alternate in strange contrast with villa-residences of bygone days, sitting far back from the rattle and noise amid the bowery seclusion of their own fine old trees.

For some distance Margerie followed in the steps of her former pursuer. Then they had to cross another road. The old lady had just stepped off the curb-stone when a heavy two-horse van came rattling round the corner. She started back in affright, slipped, and fell upon her right arm on the edge of the pavement.

A man who was near assisted her to rise, and Margerie, who was only a few paces behind, instantly forgetting her fear in sympathetic concern, ran forward to pick up the old umbrella once more, and say in her own pretty way, "I do hope you are not hurt!"

"I can manage to get home," answered the old lady, though evidently in great pain, "if you'll carry my parcel. I live close by."

Kind little Margerie gladly complied, and somewhat imperiously dismissing other offers of help, her new acquaintance went limping independently on her way.

"Will you take my arm?" ventured Margerie timidly, but full of desire to help.

"No, child, no! You look after my things, that's enough for you to do," was the decisive reply.

Presently they stopped before a rusty, ramshackle iron gate in a high, blank wall. It had once been a rather grand-looking gate, and a pair of broken-nosed griffins still guarded it on either side.

"Open it!" commanded the old lady in a voice sharp with pain.

Margerie did so, and a large grass-grown garden was shown within, all wild, neglected and weedy, with a tangle of bushes surrounding a broken statue in the centre. Far back stood a strange-looking house, old and dilapidated, most of the windows of which were curtainless and many of them broken.

"Feel in my pocket for a latch-key!" groaned the old lady, whose suffering increased every moment.

Full of wonder at the strangeness of her adventure, Margerie obeyed, and accompanying her companion up the long, moss-covered path, was next directed to open the weather-beaten front door, which, by the way, was shaded by a blackened and crumbling porch. Such a forsaken, forgotten-looking house and grounds she had never seen before. One could fancy that all the people who ever lived there had gone miles and miles away, years and years ago, and that the house had sat waiting for them to come back until it had grown hopeless and stupid, and fallen fast asleep.

Margerie was afraid the old lady would ask her to go inside, and had it been so, I have no doubt that, in spite of the peculiar shrinking which the "uncanny" appearance of the house and its occupant inspired, a desire to be of use would have urged her to comply. But as soon as the door was opened, revealing an interior shabby and comfortless in the extreme, the old lady took the umbrella and grocery parcel in her uninjured hand, saying, "That will do. Now go home."

"Can't I do anything more for you?" asked Margerie, half sorry and half relieved to get her dismissal.

"No, no! I never want anybody to do anything for me," replied the old lady in a haughty and repellent tone, quite ignoring the service which our little girl had already performed. "You make haste home!"

CHAPTER VI.

BLACK-EYED AND BAREFOOT.

WHEN Margerie related her adventure, her mother and father seemed very much pleased with the way she had behaved. Mr. Grace, especially, appeared to take a remarkable interest in the little girl's graphic description of her new acquaintance, which, however, minute though it was, did not, one would suppose, wholly satisfy him, for he asked questions respecting further details, some of which she was unable to answer, such as:

"What did the old lady buy at the grocer's? Did she ask for the best tea, or a cheaper kind? Did she look like a person in good health? Did she look happy?"

Margerie thought the first two queries very odd, not like her father a bit. To the third she answered, "Yes, I think so," but responded to the fourth with an unhesitating "No!" Child though she was, she had recognized unmistakable lines of heart-sickness and discontent upon the stranger's face.

Mr. Grace sighed at her reply, and for some minutes lay back in his chair, with closed eyes. Margerie thought he was feeling weak and tired—perhaps she had tired him by talking too loud or too long. She would not disturb him by speaking again, but softly unclosing the listless hand that lay upon his knee, pressed two warm little kisses into the palm and shut it up again. It was one of her quaint, loving ways.

Mr. Grace opened his eyes and smiled down at her wistful face; then he tenderly stroked her soft bright hair.

"I think you will have to go and see that poor old lady again, Margie," he said. "You might be able to do something for her; at least we ought to inquire how she is."

"She might be worse, mightn't she?" observed Margerie. "I'm afraid she hurt her arm very much. I wonder if she lives in that dreary old house all alone! Minnie can go with me when I go to see her—can't she, father?"

"Certainly, my love. And, Margerie, I think you had better call to-morrow. There is no telling how ill she may be."

Accordingly, on the following evening, after tea, Minnie and Margerie set out together to find that strange old house buried away in the busy, bustling street. There was a timber-yard, they found, on one side of it, and a draper's shop on the other, which had been built-out over garden ground corresponding to that of the old lady's abode. The latter was entirely hidden from view by the trees, now veiled in daintiest spring green, which grew close to gate and wall, and even hung over the public path beneath.

It was with a strange feeling that Margerie opened the big rusty gate, and went in. The sound of wheels in the road without seemed instantly to lull, and the sleepy silence of that old garden sank like a weight upon her spirit. Instinctively she crept close to Minnie and nestled her hand in her sister's.

"What a queer place!" whispered the elder girl—one would no more have thought of talking loud in that garden than in a graveyard or a church. "Only one of the windows has a blind, and that looks as if it had not been drawn up or down for about fifty years! Perhaps it is haunted!"

As she spoke, there was a faint rustle among the bushes by the side wall, and turning, Margerie caught sight of a figure, small and dark, crouching among them, and a face with great black eyes and unkempt hair peering watchfully out, like some wild creature hiding from its pursuers.

With a half-stifled cry, she directed Minnie's attention to the same object, which now stole in timorous haste behind the shrubs towards the gate, whence, when reached, it darted in the form of a ragged, barefoot boy, and disappeared.

"I wonder who he is, and what he has been doing in here?" said Margerie.

The old lady opened the door to them herself, but only to the extent of about six inches. She looked very straight and very stern, and did not ask them inside. Her injured arm was in a sling. It was as well as could be expected, she said. She had not been to a doctor, and did not mean to. She knew how to manage herself.

"Father was so sorry to hear about it," said Margerie. "He told us to be sure and ask if we could do anything for you."

"Your father did, eh?" queried the old lady, in a sharp voice, and with a still sharper look out of her immense black eyes.

"He is ill himself through meeting with an accident," Minnie explained; "so that makes him sympathize with others. He has been laid up nearly three months."

The old lady seemed as if she were going to say something, but instead shut her long thin lips very close, and her back seemed to grow even stiffer than before.

So the girls, finding that they were decidedly not wanted, bade her a rather hasty "good-bye" and came away. It was quite a relief to get out of the "enchanted garden" as Minnie afterwards called it, into the noisy, everyday street again.

In the shadow of a pile of planks, by the gate of the timber-yard, they came again upon the ragged fugitive whose presence in the neighbourhood of the old house had so startled them a few minutes before. He was but a little bigger than Margerie, yet looked older than Minnie. His face was shockingly thin, white and hungry-looking, and there was a certain something in his large, hollow dark eyes which made Margerie feel as though she had seen them more than once before. The impression was not a pleasant one.

"Did you see that boy again?" she said to her sister when they had passed. "He did look at me so. I wonder if he is hungry?"

"He is staring after us now," said Minnie, glancing back. "I shouldn't wonder."

"I've got a penny," said Margerie. "I think I'll buy him a bun—one of those nice ones with lemon peel and a sugary top."

"Better buy two plain ones with the money, or three of yesterday's," advised Minnie, who was practical.

Margerie looked doubtful. She had an especial weakness herself for "sugary tops," but wisely decided in favour of the larger quantity.

Oh, how the boy's black eyes shone when she shyly pushed the buns into his hands. And quite a blush glowed through the dirt on his poor, wasted cheek.

He was too much taken aback to utter one word of thanks, but Margerie never missed it. She went dancing back to Minnie, her face radiant with pleasure. Had she known at that moment all that she was destined afterwards to discover, her gladness in the poor lad's gladness could scarcely have been increased.

Mr. Grace listened to the girls' account of their visit with great attention, asking, as before, more than they could tell. But he did not suggest that they should make any further inquiries respecting the old lady's health.

A month passed on; it was drawing near the time for Ellen to leave. For Maud had agreed to Minnie's suggestion respecting their own ability to help with the housework, and their mother when consulted had willingly, nay gladly, given her consent, the more so that Ellen was known to have long cherished a wish to "better" herself. It yet remained to be seen, however, whether they possessed sufficient steadfastness and self-denial to carry out what they had so freely undertaken.

They were each to have regular duties—turn and turn about. The week that Minnie made the beds and tidied the bed-rooms, Maud was to dust the parlour and sweep the stairs. To Margerie, who begged to be given a share in the plan, was assigned the duty of keeping all ledges, beadings, and hand-rails clean. Mother would tend the invalid, whose progress was, alas, so very, very slow, and do the cooking ("except make the toast!" Margerie put in), and a charwoman was to come once a week to clean the steps, scrub the floors, and perform all the hardest and roughest labour.

"I wish I were bigger," said Margerie. "I don't seem able to do nearly as much as the others."

"Willing hands, however small, are never left idle," said her father, gathering both of hers in his own and giving them a kiss. "Your turn will come, little one, never fear."

One afternoon when they returned from school, Mrs. Grace herself opened the door. An unmistakable glow of excitement was flushing her cheeks and shining in her eyes.

"Go into the parlour all of you," she said in a rather queer voice, "and be prepared for a great surprise."

"How? Who? What?" they eagerly cried, full in a moment of pleasant expectation, and crowding one another in.

But the familiar room looked just the same as ever, nor revealed anything new to their devouring gaze.

"What is it? Is it nice? Is it something good?" they queried, closing round their mother.

"In some respects it is very good," returned Mrs. Grace, with a smile that was not wholly free from a cloud of misgiving. "Whether you will think it nice or not is another thing."

CHAPTER VII.

GRANDMOTHER.

"TELL us quick, mother dear," begged the three girls, their curiosity respecting the "great surprise" wrought to the highest pitch by their mother's dubious words.

"Well then," disclosed Mrs. Grace, "Margerie's friend—the old lady—has been here this afternoon."

Three "Oh's!" greeted this announcement, each in a different key; Margerie's bright and pleased in tone, Maud's indifferent "Is 'that' all?" but that of Minnie expressing anticipation of some more weighty communication yet to come.

"Is her arm well?" asked Margerie. "I wonder how she found out where we lived."

"Her arm is very far from well," replied Mrs. Grace. "Indeed I fear, from what she says, that she may lose the use of it entirely."

"How sad!" said Minnie. "But what did she come for, mother?"

"Principally to see your father."

"Fancy! How kind of her. We told her he was ill, Margie, you remember. But I never should have expected this of her—she was so very 'short' with us when we called."

"You don't expect either, I daresay, Minnie, to hear that she had a special reason for coming," said Mrs. Grace with a touch of mischief in her smile; "to hear, for instance, that this old lady is your own grandmamma."

"MOTHER!!!"

Three rosy mouths opened with amazement, and forgot to close again, while as many pairs of sparkling eyes, growing round and dark, focussed their startled gaze on those of Mrs. Grace.

"It is a fact. Margerie, little as she thought it, was making the acquaintance of her father's mother, whom he had not seen or heard of for nearly fifteen years."

"Did she know Margerie? How did she find out? We never told her our name, for she did not ask."

"She heard Margerie mention the name of Grace when she ordered the grocery that day—"

"Oh, I know!" broke in the little girl.

"But I believe she had some trouble to discover where we live. In the end, I think she said, she was forced to make inquiries at the shop."

"What made her think that father was her son?" questioned Maud. "I mean, how did she come to suspect that Margerie was her grandchild?"

"From her likeness to me, she said," replied Mrs. Grace. "She saw me several times, years ago, and some people never forget a face."

"What ever did father say?" asked Minnie. "Wasn't he pleased?"

"Why!" exclaimed Margerie, with a sudden light breaking in upon her. "I do believe father guessed it from the first—from what I told him she was like."

"Your description was so vivid, Margie, that he could not fail to recognize it," her mother told her.

"And that was why he sent us to ask how she was!" cried Minnie. "I see it all now. Well, this 'is' an adventure! The 'youngest daughter' has distinguished herself once more, you see. Why couldn't it have been one of us?"

Here, then, was something for the girls to talk about. And talk they did, nineteen—no, nearer three-and-twenty—to the dozen, all tea-time and half the evening. On the whole, despite the feelings with which they had been accustomed to regard this unknown grandmother, they seemed pleased to be able to add her to their somewhat short list of near relations.

But they had not heard the whole yet. Mrs. Grace, not wishing to give them too much to think of all at once, had saved what was perhaps the most important part of her news until next morning. Then they heard that "the old lady"—as it still came most natural to call her—who had for years been living quite alone, wanted one of them to pay her a visit of indefinite duration, for the purpose, chiefly, of rendering her such assistance and attendance as her recent disablement had rendered necessary.

An ominous silence greeted this announcement. Maud looked into her tea-cup, Minnie out at the window, and Margerie straight up into her mother's face.

Maud was the first to speak. "Of course you wouldn't let us go," she said.

"I am not sure of that, if either of you were willing," replied Mrs. Grace.

"Did she say which of us she wanted?" asked Minnie.

"No, not decisively; either, I think, might do."

"You don't want to send one of us away like that, do you, mother?" questioned Maud, rather apprehensively.

"It would only be for a time, you know," said Mrs. Grace. "I think, although your father would not insist upon it were you all very much disinclined, that it would please him greatly could his mother's wish be gratified. He feels the loneliness of her position, with her advancing years, acutely. And she owns that her fall has shaken her more than she at first supposed."

"We don't know her a bit!" exclaimed Minnie with her eyes full of tears. "And—and it's such a dreadful, horrible, dead-and-buried sort of an old house!"

"But it is not so very far from home," said her mother. "Whichever of you went would see us all pretty often. And, besides," she added seriously, "your grandmother would provide your board and schooling, which in our present position is, I assure you, my dears, an object. I am often very, very anxious about your dear father. Unless he gets on faster than he has been doing, I really don't know how we shall do."

"You are glad to get rid of us, I do believe!" burst out Maud in a choking voice.

Minnie mopped her eyes in silence.

Little Margerie was very pale, but she was not crying, and had hitherto said nothing.

"I think you ought to know your own mother better than that, Maud," said Mrs. Grace, reproachfully. "I should miss one of my precious three more than I could tell. But I have just explained to you how things stand."

"It'll have to be you, you're the eldest," said Maud to Minnie, as they prepared for school.

"I sha'n't go! It isn't fair!" cried Minnie. "It was I who first thought of doing without Ellen. I don't see why all the giving-up sort of things should come to my share. And I'm going to help such a lot in the house. Mother could do ever so much better without you."

"You help! You won't do much, I know!" rejoined Maud, wrenching the buttons off her boots as with crimson face she bent to fasten them. "You're afraid of soiling your hands. I should be sorry for mother to be left to you."

"I should be sorry for her to be left to 'you!'" retorted Minnie. "You'd go about your work with a book in one hand and a broom in the other. Mother would very soon have to send for Ellen back again."

That same night, when both Minnie and Maud had forgotten in dreamless sleep the vexed question which had caused them to quarrel so sadly a few hours before, Margerie lay wide-eyed and wakeful in her bed. Her mind was full of restless thoughts. Thoughts about father and his long illness, and the heavy doctor's bill mother said they would have to pay; thoughts about herself, and the shilling a week for her schooling, and the piles of bread-and-butter, and plates of meat and potatoes she consumed—she wondered how many cups of cocoa were worth one basin of beef-tea; thoughts about the poor, lonely old lady with the sorrowful dark eyes and the "bad" arm; thoughts about her own dear, happy home,—and her little pillow grew wet.

When Mrs. Grace stole softly into the room to take a last peep at her girls, Margerie was still awake.

She put up her arms, and drew her mother's face close down to hers.

"Mother, dear," she whispered, "I want to speak to you . . . Do you think I should be too little to help the old la—to help grandma? Maud and Minnie hate to go; if they had to, they'd be so miserable. And I think she likes me. And I would try to be useful. Do you think I could, mother, dear?"

CHAPTER VIII.

AWAY FROM HOME.

MINNIE and Maud were a good deal touched, and somewhat ashamed of themselves when they heard of little Margerie's self-sacrificing proposal, but neither they nor their mother supposed it likely that "grandma" (as they were accustoming themselves to call their newly-found relative) would agree to taking her. "She is too young to be of any use," they said.

However, to everybody's surprise, the old lady on being consulted seemed quite pleased at the idea of having the child. "If she is quiet and 'biddable,'" she observed—the girls had never heard that old-fashioned word before, and it struck them as very funny—"I shall soon get her into the way of being handy. I suppose she has been brought up to mind what is said to her, and do as she's told?"

Mrs. Grace, junior, "hoped so," but Maud pulled down the corners of her mouth at Minnie behind a book, and Margerie's gray eyes grew solemn and round. She could not persuade herself by any device that she "liked" the prospect of going off with this singular old person, grandmother though she be, to live in that "eerie" old house all alone. Sometimes she felt almost as if she should run away and hide somewhere when the last moment came; even Jamie's admiring remark that she was "a Trojan" suggested a possible necessity for extraordinary courage that was far from reassuring. But Minnie and Maud had so positively declared that they wouldn't go, and poor grandma with her crippled arm and lame hip must need someone to do things for her, and so—and so—it must be Margerie.

"You will come and see us every Sunday, you know, my darling, and we shall come and see you in the week besides," said Mrs. Grace, when, after accompanying the child to grandma's queer old house, and inspecting the little bed-room which she was to call her own, she bade her a final good-bye. "And if you are not happy, we will have you home directly."

"I feel like a little servant going out to a situation," said Margerie, with a rather tremulous smile.

One circumstance that made this parting harder than she had at first anticipated, was the fact that she would no longer go to the same school as her sisters. It was too far, being quite as long a distance from Briar Cottage in the one direction as grandma's house was in the opposite. But Mrs. Grace, senior, undertook that Margerie should at once commence attending another school as good, and her mother did not object.

"But I sha'n't be so very, very far-away from you all, shall I?" she added wistfully.

"Why, no—home is close by," her mother cheerfully responded. "And you know, Margie dear, the Lord Jesus will be nearer still. His Spirit comes so close to yours that every thought, every sigh, every throb of your little heart is felt by His. His power of sympathy is so infinite and wonderful! I, with my arms clasped round you cannot come anything like so near to you as He is every moment of your life, because He can come inside your very soul. And He loves you, Margie, and is pleased with what you are doing in leaving your dear home. He knows it is to please father and help grandmother, and because you want to be some use and comfort in the world. I'm sure His tenderness and love are all round you, my precious child, so you need never feel lonely, and never be afraid."

"That's nice!" said Margie, with her face against her mother's breast. "I like being very near to Him."

But she could not repress a sob when the dear familiar figure of her mother passed out of the rusty iron gate and disappeared. Mrs. Grace did not shut the gate behind her, she was too much a mother for that.

Bravely did Margie keep swallowing down the big lump that would rise in her throat, as she wound worsted for grandma's knitting, and fetched and carried, and ate her supper of thick bread with a thin scrape of cheap salt butter on it. She now and then furtively wiped her eyes with her knuckles, but did not actually break down and cry until she was alone in the strange little bed in the strange little room upstairs, amid strange old-fashioned furniture, with forms and shadows that were unfamiliar to her peering eyes.

It may seem odd, but it was not the thought of parents or sisters that "set her off" at last—it was the idea that this bed and bed-room didn't know her or care about her, and that the cosy white crib at home that had cuddled her every night as long as she could remember, would wait for her in vain. The poor little empty bed! Margerie stuffed the corner of the pillow into her mouth and shook with sobs. It did her good, though, that fit of unrestrained weeping. The pillow, at least, seemed more friendly after it had been wet with her tears, and with both arms round it, she by and by fell asleep.

Margerie soon found that grandma was very much in earnest when she said that she should "get her into the way of being handy." Only three rooms in the house (besides a kitchen) were occupied: viz. a parlour and the two bed-rooms. All the others were either empty or shut up and locked. But the woman who worked for grandma seldom came more than twice a week, and all the lighter labour which was required in the intervals, which the old lady before her accident had performed himself, she now expected our little maid to do. It was a good deal for a child not yet ten years old, quite as much as Minnie and Maud had undertaken to do between them at home.

And then mother was so different! She would tell anybody how to do a thing over and over again, but grandma did not seem to like to have to show Margerie more than once, or at most, twice. Nevertheless, being one of those quick, imitative children who delight in copying the movements of their elders, and really desirous of doing her very best and being a great deal of use, the little girl soon became surprisingly deft in her handling of broom and brush, so that if grandma gave her no praise, she at least rarely found cause for complaint.

One evening the old lady suddenly observed in her sharp, abrupt way, "I suppose you would very much rather live here than at home?"

This was a "poser." Margerie turned as red as fire, and twisted the corner of her apron. "I like being able to help you, grandma," she said.

She was not looking at the old lady as she spoke, but out into the high-walled garden, dim with trees and gathering twilight, or she would have seen those long, thin lips soften into something more like a smile than grandma's iron features usually displayed.

"Humph!" the latter said. "But it was your own wish to come, your mother told me," was the next remark.

"Ye-es!" whispered Margie.

"You were wise. It is a great thing, in your father's present position, for you to get your board, lodging, and schooling for nothing. An immense advantage, and one which few children of your age have offered them. It is more than your father, after the way he behaved towards me before you were born, had any right to expect. But I am willing to let bygones be bygones, you see, and behave generously towards you."

If any unprejudiced person had noted the amount of waiting upon, of sweeping, dusting, washing up, and general attendance Mrs. Grace, senior, obtained of that one small pair of hands and feet in return for the said "immense advantage," he might have come to the conclusion that the balance of indebtedness didn't exactly "bump" down on Margerie's side. But let that pass. The little girl herself believed she had cause to be very grateful, and very grateful she earnestly tried to be.

One night, about ten days after her arrival, when the first dreadful home-sickness had somewhat worn off, Margerie woke up suddenly, while it was yet quite dark. She did not know what had aroused her, but her first feeling was of terror and intent listening.

With every sense concentrated into that of hearing, she sat up in bed. The stealthy opening of a door was audible below, followed by the softest of footsteps.

Margerie occupied a small room over a built-out scullery. Grandma slept on the same floor in the front. She sprang out of bed and darted along a short corridor to the old lady's chamber. The door was ajar, and grandma's deep, uninterrupted breathing could be heard within. On the threshold the child paused; should she wake her or not? What could a poor old lady with a bad arm and a lame hip do to help anybody? Besides, she was not like mother; she might be very angry if aroused.

While Margerie stood with the handle of the lock in her hand, still hesitating, a faint glimmer of light became visible, as if moving noiselessly about the lower part of the house. She sprang half inside the room with a smothered scream, her eyes still fixed upon the descending stairs. The light instantly vanished, and the darkness and silence—save for grandma's snoring—were profound.

The old lady was somewhat hard of hearing when her night-cap was on, and continued to sleep undisturbed.

CHAPTER IX.

A MYSTERY.

NEITHER light nor footsteps came again, though Margerie stood still, watching and listening, until she lost all sensation of hands or feet. Grandma snored on. Gradually the child's fear subsided; daylight was beginning to peep at the windows. Those spring mornings were chilly, and she felt very cold. With one fearful glance between the banisters as she passed, Margerie sped back to her own room, sprang into bed, and pulled the clothes over her head.

Then it was she recollected what her mother had said about the nearness of the Lord Jesus. Home-sick though she had often been, she had never thought about that very much until now. Loneliness and pain and fear are indeed messengers of God; what we should do without them, I do not know. Some of us, I am afraid, would never seek our Father's arms at all.

And Margerie prayed:

"Oh, Lord Jesus, please take care of us. Don't let anything hurt us!"

Over and over again, until she felt confident and trustful enough to put back the stifling bed-clothes and look out. A golden bar of dawning sunshine was rippling on the wall.

I think if she could have reached, she would have got up and kissed the lovely spot, she was so glad. It seemed like a little angel sent to guard her. Who could be afraid with God's sweet sunshine in the room? Fixing her loving, grateful eyes upon the growing radiance, she once more fell peacefully asleep.

As soon as Margerie saw her grandmother in the morning, she told her of what had occurred. Mrs. Grace eyed her keenly at first, and with apparent interest, but soon turned away with a careless air, saying, "You've been dreaming, child. Who should be walking about this house in the middle of the night? You ate too much supper, that's what it was, and had the nightmare."

"But, grandma, I'm sure I was awake," persisted Margerie earnestly.

"Nonsense! Don't pretend you know better than I do," rejoined the old lady sharply. "And don't let me hear of any such foolishness again."

This was on Thursday. Margerie did not expect to see any of her family until Sunday. The thought once crossed her mind that she would run home instead of going to school, and pour out her tale of terror into her mother's ever sympathetic ears. But she did not do so, partly because she had an instinctive horror of anything underhanded, and partly because she had an idea that if her grandmother found her out in such a trick, she would be very angry, and perhaps refuse to have her back again. And though, other considerations apart, Margerie would have felt immensely relieved by such a catastrophe, she would not for the world have done anything whereby the present friendly feeling between her father and his long-estranged mother might be endangered. The little girl did not think all this out in so many words, but she felt it, and like a true little heroine, resolved for the sake of others to endure.

Thursday night and Friday night passed undisturbed, and Margerie was even beginning to think she perhaps would not worry those at home by mentioning that one unpleasant experience at all—it might never happen again—when another strange thing occurred.

She was instructed to rise when grandma rang her chamber bell, which was usually at half-past six in the morning, go downstairs and set light to the fire which, under grandma's directions, she "laid" every night before going to bed, and sweep and dust the parlour while the kettle got hot, before the old lady came down. On Saturday morning, as usual she went to wash her hands after these operations while grandma set the table for breakfast. When she returned to the parlour, Mrs. Grace said in a very stern voice: "Margerie, where is that currant roll the baker gave you with the loaf yesterday?"

"I don't know, grandma," replied the little girl. "Isn't it in the bread-pan?"

"No; or I should not ask you about it!" returned the old lady in a tone of great displeasure.

Oh, how straight her back was then! Margerie had recently learned that in most persons the backbone is composed of a great number of small joints, but she felt sure that grandma's must have been made all in one hard, stiff piece; there was not a bend in it anywhere.

She was very sorry for the disappearance of that little currant roll—it was the only thing in the cake or confectionery line which had entered the house since she had been an inmate, and she had regarded it with a peculiarly affectionate gaze when putting it away, at grandma's bidding, the day before. But the unspoken suspicion which Mrs. Grace's manner reflected was infinitely worse.

On Saturdays they always had the best dinner of the week—the strange old lady did not believe in very sumptuous fare—consisting of a joint of meat and some kind of fruit pie, to be eaten cold on Sunday. On the present occasion, it was shoulder of mutton and gooseberry-tart—one helping of each. Two three-cornered pieces were thus cut out of the pie, one for grandma and one for Margerie, and it was then put away.

On Sunday morning when our little girl and her grandmother had returned from church, the former stood looking out of her bed-room window, and hoping that the great blue-gray cloud which was gathering up would not come down in rain until she could get safely home, for that Sunday home-going was the hope and reward of the whole dreary week. But she was more than half afraid. The cloud was turning from blue to black, and the tangle of long grass and untrimmed bushes in the garden grew every moment more gloomy beneath its shade.

I may here remark that the back garden was nearly as large as the front, with which it communicated by means of a narrow alley on either side of the house, the latter being wholly detached and standing in its own ground. Against the wall at the bottom, which a centre tree almost completely hid from the view of anyone in the house, was a tumble-down arbour, only held together in the last stage of infirmity by a network of creepers to which it had once given support.

"Margerie! Margerie!"

Grandma's voice was so extra sharp and imperative that the words sounded like shots fired from below. The little girl flew down the stairs to see what could be the matter.

The cloth for dinner was spread upon the table, yet nothing stood upon it but the gooseberry pie. Grandma pointed to the latter with her uninjured arm at full length.

"Look at that!" she commanded.

Margerie looked. The cavity in the crust was quite twice as large as it had been when put away the day before.

Her grave gray eyes travelled in troubled wonderment from the pie to grandma's stern face, then back to the pie again. She did not speak, for she did not know what to say.

"What is the meaning of that?" queried the old lady in tones of suppressed anger, and still pointing stonily to the yawning chasm in the top crust.

"I—I don't know," faltered the little girl, her lips quivering with coming tears.

"No falsehoods, wicked child!" exclaimed her grandmother. "You will say next that I have eaten it myself. To be greedy and to steal is quite bad enough without adding lies!"

"I'm not telling a falsehood!" sobbed poor Margerie. "I've not touched the pie. And I didn't eat the currant roll. It—it must be the mice!"

"Mice wouldn't lift the cup to let the juice out," said Mrs. Grace conclusively. "And that's what has been done here. And they wouldn't leave the spoon they had used lying by the side. And they wouldn't have picked the four shortcakes off the top, and carried them away!"

Mrs. Grace was dreadfully in earnest, but unfortunately the series of pictures her words suggested presented themselves so vividly to Margie's imagination that, unhappy as she was, she could not stifle a half-hysterical laugh.

"Hardened little thing!" cried the old lady with increased indignation. "Go to your room this moment, miss, and don't let me see you again till you're sent for!"

"I 'didn't' touch the pie! I 'didn't,' I tell you!" protested Margerie, emphasizing her words with a little stamp of her foot, for she was totally unused to such accusations as this.

Her grandmother made no reply, but her long stiff arm was now pointing immovably to the door. Cowed and heart-broken the child crept away, just as the first flash of lightning illumined the twilight gloom, and a cascade of rain-drops came rattling against the panes.

CHAPTER X.

THE COAL-CELLAR WINDOW.

STORM inside and storm without—what an afternoon it was! The thunder rumbled, and Margerie sobbed; the rain fell in cataracts, and so did our little girl's tears. She was not afraid of the tempest, but it was a great trouble to her, inasmuch as it prevented her running away home, as in the present crisis she otherwise certainly would have done.

At tea-time, grandma called her down, with, however, displeasure still sharp in her tone, and gave her three thick slices of bread—her usual allowance—but without butter, and a mug of weak milk and water without sugar. This she was told to take to her room and consume in solitude. Although embittered by the reflection that it was "punishment diet," this meal went down with remarkable relish, as Margerie had had no dinner. She did not remember ever tasting dry bread that was so sweet before.

All the evening—that sad, gray evening through which the rain poured ceaselessly down—the little girl sat alone in her room. How different from the happy time with father and mother and sisters to which she had been looking forward! She had believed all her tears were spent, but this thought puckered her chin once more, and made the dull old furniture quiver and dance before her swimming eyes.

Yet after all, something suddenly whispered to her, it was not nearly so bad to be considered naughty when she knew she was not, than to have people believing her good when all the while she knew herself to be naughty! Suppose she "had" stolen and been greedy and told stories—the awful list of grandma's unjust accusations—and no one suspected her! Suppose she had been going about, a little live lie, with unconfessed wrong buried in her heart—how horrible "that" would have been! Why, her present misery was nothing to what that must be. God knew she was innocent, and mother and all of them would believe what she would tell them, and everybody would sympathize with her. There wasn't so much to cry about after all.

So with a feeling of comfort, whose source she did not recognize, warming her lonely little heart, Margerie went calmly though supperless to bed. And the rain trickling monotonously down a pipe outside, sang her a soothing lullaby till she fell asleep.

The next morning rose bright and fair. The loveliest white clouds were sailing across a sky of pure, clean-washed blue, and the wet green grass and leaves were sparkling like laughter in the sunshine.

Margerie was awakened as usual by grandma's bell, and on going downstairs, found that she must lay the fire before lighting it, as in consequence of her banishment, she had not done so the night before. But she had so often performed this operation under grandma's guidance that she knew quite well how to set about it.

First, she drew on a pair of old kid gloves which she had been taught to wear when doing any work of this kind. Next, she raked out all the remains of yesterday's fire, carefully picking out all half-burned coals, and sifting the cinders. Then she filled the lower part of the grate with a good-sized piece of lightly-crumpled newspaper, and above it laid a row of the thinnest sticks she could find, and another row upon them in the opposite direction, like an extended arrangement of lines for "oughts and crosses." On top of these she gently placed—exactly as grandma had told her—some of her biggest cinders, building them up pyramid fashion, with numerous apertures for the rising flames and smoke to pass through. Lastly she set light to the paper with a match, and watched with an ever new delight the merry blaze of the wood, and the thin blue vapour curling upward.

But soon some "nubbly" bits of coal must be added, and these she must go and find. So taking the shovel, she started for the coal-cellar that was out beyond the scullery which I have already mentioned. With not a thought but of the work in hand, Margerie opened the scullery door.

The next moment she started back with a cry of amazement and alarm.

Curled up on the top of the copper was a human form—the form of a ragged boy, who, awakened from sleep by her scream, stared at her in a half-dazed fashion out of a pair of large, black eyes. Margerie recognized him as the lad she had given the buns to a few weeks before.

They gazed at each other for some moments in silence, the trespasser apparently as much surprised to see Margerie as she was to see him. He was the first to speak.

"Don't peach, will you?" he begged. "Don't set the bobby on me. I'll never do it again."

And he jumped down from his strange bed and made for the coal-cellar door.

"Stop a minute," said Margerie. "Grandma isn't down yet. I won't tell. But say, did you go along that passage with a candle one night? Wednesday night it was."

"Yes," the boy reluctantly confessed.

"What for?"

He was silent.

"How do you get in?" was Margerie's next query.

The lad pointed to the small, square window of the coal-place, which was neither glazed nor barred. No man nor even a good-sized boy could have possibly squeezed through it, but this intruder was so very, very slim and thin.

"Did you—did you—?" faltered the little girl diffidently. "Please don't mind my asking!—Did you happen to see anything of a currant roll about any night when—when you were here?"

The boy grinned and backed into the coal-collar, but made no reply.

"Or—or a gooseberry pie?" pursued Margerie anxiously.

"Come now, don't be down on a poor fellow," said the lad deprecatingly, for he believed Margerie's tone to be ironical. "The bits I picked up here were all I had to live on the whole blessed week. I'll never do it again. But I was that starving hungry I could 'most have eaten an old shoe—and that's the solemn truth."

It occurred to Margerie afterwards, though she did not notice it at the time, that this waif did not use quite such bad grammar as that attributed to his class in stories she had read. The same impression, moreover, of the familiarity of his face and eyes which had struck her when first they met, now returned with renewed force. She felt as if she must have known him well somewhere before.

"It must be dreadful to be so hungry," said Margerie sympathetically, recollecting her experience of the previous day. "But it wasn't quite right of you to help yourself like that. And grandma thinks it's me, and she's awfully angry with me."

"Thinks it's you been eating the bread and things?" exclaimed the boy.

He was mounted now on a heap of coals just below the window aforesaid, ready to bolt at the first sound of any new approach.

"I don't know that she has missed any bread," replied Margerie, "but she believes I ate that currant roll and the pie. And she wouldn't give me any dinner yesterday, and sent me up to my room."

The lad seemed very much struck by this information, but once again took refuge in silence.

"You won't come and take anything more, will you?" pursued Margerie.

"That I won't," rejoined the boy emphatically. "Not if I starve to death!"

"Oh, dear! I hope you won't be so hungry as all that," said Margerie, in real distress. "It would be so shocking! Perhaps—perhaps I could do something for you . . . You be just there by the timber-yard—where you were that day, you remember,—and I'll try and bring you a bit of something as I go past to school. I believe I hear grandma opening her door," she hastily added. "You'd better run!"

The boy needed no second warning.

"Don't split, I say!" was his last entreaty, as he pushed his head and shoulders out of the little window.

"I won't! I promise!" answered Margerie, without calculating what trouble such an undertaking might involve.

And two muddy bare feet vanished, leaving our little girl marvelling and alone.

CHAPTER XI.

"NED'S ENOUGH!"

WHEN Mrs. Grace entered the kitchen, the newly-lighted fire which Margerie had left untended during her strange talk with the intruder was invisible, thus exposing her to fresh reprimands from her still unreconciled grandmother. But the child's mind was so full of her startling discovery that these did not impress her so deeply as they otherwise might; though her grandmother's stern manner caused her to realize, with some dismay, how she had, by her willingly given promise not to "tell" of the boy's thefts, cut herself off from the chance of proving her own innocence.

This, however, troubled her less than the dreadful probability he had hinted at, that he might actually starve to death! Of course Margerie had heard of very poor people almost starving in the winter, but the reality had never before come so close to her as it now did in the person of that poor boy, with his bony arms and sharpened face, and pitiful, hungry dark eyes. The trouble of her own unmerited disgrace seemed to dwindle into nothing beside so terrible a possibility.

Grandma hardly spoke to her during breakfast, but she allowed her the usual three slices of bread-and-butter. One of these, or rather part of two, Margerie managed with some difficulty to secrete and carry from the table under her little apron. And this, let me say, not without considerable exercise of self-denial, for after her meagre fare of the day before she could well have eaten more, rather than less, than her usual portion.

Nobody would have guessed that, however, who saw the bright face with which, in the shadow of the wood-yard gateway, she brought the fragments out of her satchel.

"Here's some bread-and-butter," she said. "Perhaps I'll be able to save you more another time. I'll save you a bit anyhow at tea-time, if grandma isn't looking. But she's got dreadful sharp eyes!"

"Do you live there?" asked the boy, already munching.

"Yes. But that isn't my home," Margerie told him, loitering with friendly air and swinging her school-bag. "Mrs. Grace is my grandmother—"

"Mrs. 'who?'" interrupted the waif, with his mouth inconveniently full.

"Mrs. Grace. I'm Margerie Grace. I'm stopping with her a bit because she has got a bad arm."

The boy's industrious jaws had suddenly ceased their masticatory exercises as he put his last query, and only resumed work in a slow, absentminded sort of way towards the end of Margie's reply. He was staring hard at her all the while with his owl-like eyes.

"What's your name?" asked the little girl.

He appeared to hesitate for a moment, and then said, "Ned."

"Ned what?"

"Nothing. Ned's enough!" returned the boy, shortly.

Just then the first quarter past nine chimed from a neighbouring church tower, and simultaneously the last morsel of bread-and-butter disappeared.

"I must make haste now," said Margerie, "or I shall be late for school. I'll tell you what. I'll put anything I can save for you out on the scullery window-ledge last thing to-night. I'll wrap it in paper all nice so that the cats won't get it, and you'll find it there. But you won't come in the house any more, will you? Because grandma would be so angry, and besides that I'm sure it can't be right."

"On my word and honour I won't," Ned assured her. "I'll sleep in that summer-house place at the end of the garden, like I used. You'll let me do that and won't peach, won't you?"

"I don't think there can be any harm in that," said Margerie. "But isn't it a very nasty place to sleep in? All earwigs and things! Have you slept there often?"

"Off and on for a couple of months or so," Ned confessed. "It's 'most a wonder the old girl hasn't twigged it before now. I never came inside the house till that night I came with the candle-end to look for grub. I daresay I might, though, if I'd known it was so jolly easy."

"Well, anyhow, you won't again; that's a promise. Now, good-bye."

With a bright confiding smile, and gay wave of her satchel, Margerie ran off, turning many times to throw back another pleasant glance ere she wholly passed from view.

"'Well!'" quoth Ned to himself, never taking his gaze from the little figure until it disappeared round a bend in the road. "She's a one-er! She's a—she's a fairy, and no mistake! She's got a face like a flower! Think I'm going to set myself a-side of 'her?' Not if I know it! She'd think it was all my cheek. Ned's enough!"

At dinner-time, Margerie actually contrived to slip a piece of the cold mutton off her plate while grandma's back was turned, the worst that followed being a reprimand for "bolting" her meat without an adequate proportion of potatoes. And at tea, she secured another share for Ned from her own bread-and-butter. She was not conscious of any wrong in this. After grandma gave it her, it was her own, she thought. And her motive was so good and pure that it really almost excused the deception which it involved.

Minnie and Maud came to see her in the evening. Grandma, somewhat to her surprise, said not a word to them about her supposed naughtiness. But she also, by taking care to be continually within hearing of the girls, and peremptorily forbidding Margerie even to accompany them alone to the gate, debarred her from communicating her version of the story. Mrs. Grace, senior, had resolved that her daughter-in-law should be the first to hear of Margerie's delinquencies and from her own lips. She therefore purposed to call at Briar Cottage as soon as the weather, just then very showery, should permit.

For the next few mornings Margerie met Ned regularly as she went to school, and as regularly bestowed upon him a portion of her own breakfast. And every evening saw a little paper parcel, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, according to Margerie's own appetite, lying on the scullery windowsill. She found it easier to give up the whole of her supper-slice than any part of her allowance for tea, but more difficult to evade grandma's eyes. She had sometimes to pretend to be eating when she was not, and I am glad to say that this dissimulation was so distasteful to her, that before the close of the second day of it she was seriously casting about in her mind for a better means of helping poor Ned.

If we know a thing to be good, it is so much better to do it openly, even if we get into trouble in consequence, than to deceive. Deceit is such a mean, ugly sin. Margerie was beginning to feel that it stained what otherwise would have been a right action, but more than suspecting that grandma would forbid all further intercourse with the waif if she were informed of the truth, was much troubled to know what to do.

Meanwhile Ned, too, was growing daily more disturbed in mind. The knowledge that this sweet little girl was not only denying herself, but bearing undeserved suspicion for his sake, roused within him the latent fire of manliness, which a long course of privation and ill-treatment had well-nigh extinguished.

"I say," he began on the fourth morning of their meeting, "does the old g—your grandmother still think you ate that pie and things?"

"Oh yes!" returned Margie rather dolefully. "I suppose she always will. Perhaps mother will be able to persuade her. I think she is coming to see me to-night. Mother knows I wouldn't do such a thing. I shouldn't think—" and the little girl's face grew very anxious as she spoke—"I shouldn't 'think' grandma would be able to make her believe I had."

"Look here," said Ned, with resolution, "I'll make a clean breast myself. I ain't going on like this—getting you in no end of a row. I'll come and tell her myself."

"Tell grandma you got into her house and—and 'stole?'" queried Margerie, half incredulously.

"Yes. I'll chance it. If she walks me off to the lock-up—well, I reckon I can stand that. But I'm bothered if I can stand your being jacketed for what I did."

"Oh, Ned, you 'are' brave!" cried Margerie. "It is good of you. I am so glad! Come when I'm at home, Ned; come this evening when mother is here. 'She' won't be hard on you, even if grandma is. Mother's 'lovely'—I should like you to see her. You will come, won't you?"

The boy repeated his promise, and Margerie skipped away, lighter in heart than she had been for many a day.

CHAPTER XII.

A BRAVE CONFESSION.

THE evening arrived, and so did Margerie's mother. Oh, what joy and comfort and "home" it was to nestle once more in her dear arms! Margerie felt as if nothing could go wrong with her any more.

"But my little girl looks pale," said the younger Mrs. Grace, anxiously, when the first flush of joy had died from the child's cheek. "Hasn't she been quite as well as usual?"

"Her conscience has been troubling her, I've no doubt," replied grandma gruffly. "Children who behave as she has been doing ought not to look well."

"Why, what is this, then?" questioned the mother, in surprise.

But Margerie cuddled so confidingly to her side, that in spite of the old lady's words, she felt sure no serious fault was to be revealed.

"I will tell you, and then you can judge for yourself," replied grandma, and commenced her tale.

In the midst of it, however, just as she was dwelling on "the repeated falsehoods" which she laid to Margerie's charge, the little girl, who leaning against her mother's side was also watching the front gate, suddenly sprang forward.

"Here he is! Here's Ned!" she excitedly cried, and ran out of the room.

Mother and grandmother were equally at a loss to account for her action. Looking out of the window they beheld a ragged boy coming up the long path. His boots were odd ones, his coat much too large, and his face, though evidently washed for the occasion, revealing sundry streaks and lines of dirt. Notwithstanding these deterrent facts, Margerie went dancing out to meet him, and actually taking him by the hand, led him with manifest delight towards the house.

"Why, Margie my dear, what is the meaning of this?" questioned her mother, following her to the door.

"This is Ned—a boy I know. I'll tell you all about it in a minute, mother dear," answered Margerie, quite rosy with pleasure. "He's come to say—But you'll tell it all yourself, won't you, Ned?"

Mrs. Grace, senior, had by this time joined her daughter-in-law in the porch.

Ned doffed his shabby cap, made an awkward bow, and remained dumb.

"What is it? What do you want, my boy?" asked Margerie's mother.

Ned bowed again and shifted from one leg to the other. "I'm very sorry, mum," he burst out at length, with a tremendous effort. "But—but—but—"

"Go on, Ned. Mother's here," said Margie encouragingly.

"I took that pie, and the roll, and—and some bread 'n cheese. It wasn't her at all. There!"

This startling announcement of course required explanation. The soft spring rain was once more beginning to fall, so the old lady, though with evident reluctance, asked the boy to come inside. Then by means of plying him with questions, which he answered in a brief and as some would have thought sullen fashion, the whole story came out as we already know it, including the revelation of Margie's self-denial.

The little girl, glancing into her grandmother's face at this point, saw again that softened look which she had beheld on it only once before. She went to her side.

"Don't send him to prison, grandma, dear," she said coaxingly. "'Please' don't. He was dreadfully hungry, else he wouldn't have done it—would you, Ned? See how thin he is," she added in a whisper.

"But how is it you are in this condition, my boy?" asked the younger Mrs. Grace. "Have you no friends?"

"Not that I know of," answered Ned. "My mother died before I could remember her, and my father went abroad to California 'bout four years ago. I was a little chap of seven, and he left me with a woman to mind. I know he paid her, because the letters used to come. But she drank awful. Father didn't know that when he left me. After about a year, he left off sending the money and then she just did carry on! Well, I tell you, she made the place so hot for me I bolted, and came, somehow or other, up to London, and I've been living how I could ever since. Sometimes I could get a job. I ain't ever been so low as this before—I mean I never got in a house nor—nor thieved!"

Mrs. Grace, senior, made no remark whatever upon this recital; indeed she had scarcely spoken a word throughout the whole episode. But the other listener's motherly heart was touched. She put her hand in her pocket, and bringing out a shilling which she could ill enough spare, she gave it to the astonished boy, saying:

"There, get yourself a good supper and a night's lodging. And to-morrow come to my house—Briar Cottage, King's Road. Perhaps I may be able to find you some better clothes."

With many bows and scrapes, but stammered thanks, Ned took his leave, genuinely amazed to find that the assistance of a police-constable had never once been suggested.

"Isn't he a 'poor' boy?" said Margerie, as he shuffled down the garden. "You don't mind my giving him bits of my bread-and-butter, do you, mother dear?"

Mrs. Grace's answer was a tender kiss.

But grandma said, though with only a mild assumption of her usual sternness: "It would have been much better if, instead of binding herself to secrecy, Margerie had told the whole truth at first."

"Well, yes," said Margerie's mother. But she could not lose sight of the fact that when her little girl had been open and candid, she was not believed.

That night, when our little maid having eaten her supper slipped off her chair with her usual "Good-night, grandma," the latter said: "Come to me, Margerie."

She readily obeyed, and went close to her grandmother's knee.

The old lady took her hand, and for several minutes sat regarding her in silence.

Margerie standing silent, too, and wondering.

Presently grandma began to smile—really smile—though something that looked like moisture was glittering in her hard black eyes.

Then Margerie smiled back, a dear little cloudless confiding smile, with a dimple in it.

"Will you kiss me, Margerie?" asked the old lady.

The words had scarcely passed her lips when she experienced the unwonted sensation of a pair of soft arms clasping round her neck, and the pressure as of warm, live velvet against her withered cheek.

Long after Margerie was in bed and asleep, the sweet unaccustomed feeling of those childish arms and lips clung to her grandmother strangely. It was this, probably, joined to another remarkable experience which that evening had brought, which caused the latter to do something the like of which she had not done for many, many years.

Taking a candle in her hand, she unlocked one of the closed doors, and entered the chamber within. It was well furnished, but every article was covered to keep it from the dust. Thus had it stood for ten years past; since first Mrs. Grace, unable to find a tenant for the house at the rent she was asking—for it was her own—had come to live in it herself. It was characteristic of the old lady that she would rather do this at a considerable loss than lower her demand.

She next unlocked an old-fashioned bureau, and after some searching, drew forth from one of its recesses a small packet, which she carried back with her into the sitting-room. Here, having lit another candle—for she was too conservative in her notions to tolerate either gas or lamp—she proceeded to untie the same, and examine the contents.

These were chiefly letters, the paper of which had grown yellow with age and the ink brown. They were written in an unformed childish hand. Mrs. Grace did not pause to read them, merely glancing at each one as she turned it over in her search for something else. Yet her spectacles required wiping much more frequently than was their wont.

Presently, she came upon an envelope that appeared to cover an inclosure somewhat stiffer and heavier than the others, and a sound of satisfaction broke from her lips. Once more polishing her glasses she drew forth a carte-de-visite, and bringing both the candles quite close to her head, proceeded to examine it narrowly by their concentrated light.

It was the faded photograph of a little boy, attired in the baggy knickerbockers which were worn when that style of suit first came into fashion. He was a slender, rather delicate-looking child, with large, dark, eager eyes, and as the old lady gazed at the picture she murmured: "Strange, strange! It 'is' most remarkable. Stupid that I was, not to ask his name! But I could not bring myself to do it before 'her;' I was afraid—but there! I daresay it is nothing in the world but an accidental resemblance—nothing at all. One may meet with such instances every day."

CHAPTER XIII.

SITTING ON A PLANK.

MINNIE and Maud were highly indignant at the treatment Margerie had received from their grandmother. "I wonder you didn't bring her away there and then, mother," the former said.

"Would either of you have been willing to take her place?" asked Mrs. Grace suggestively.

"Grandma doesn't deserve to have any of us," said Maud. "I should just leave her to muddle on by herself."

"If none of us were allowed more help and comfort than we deserve, we should sometimes come off badly," her mother observed. "That isn't the way God treats us, and we are to try and be like Him in all things. I believe our little Margerie will do grandma real good, the more so because of the misunderstanding which has just been cleared away."

"I don't see that the poor little thing ought to be made a sacrifice of, even for grandma's good," objected Maud, who was, however, not unselfish enough to offer herself as a substitute.

"The worst is over now, I'm sure," said Mrs. Grace. "I saw grandma looking at her with eyes full of love. Who could help loving Margie? And I asked the child privately whether I should take her home, and she said quite earnestly, 'Let me stay a little while longer. I'm getting to sweep just lovely. And I don't think grandma will be so cross again.' Bless her heart! You'll see they'll get quite fond of one another yet."

"Do you 'like' grandma?" asked Minnie abruptly.

"I cannot help feeling very sorry for her," was the reply. "I am sure she has had many years of unhappiness."

"But it was all her own fault," said Maud.

"Chiefly, perhaps. And she is so much the more to be pitied. No trouble is so hard to bear as that brought upon us by our own sins or errors, because there is the additional sting of feeling that it 'need' not so have been."

"If the way she served Margie is a specimen of her treatment of her own sons," said Minnie, "I don't wonder at that youngest one running away. And yet how lonely she must have been all these years! One dead, and one lost, and the other estranged. It is only natural that father should be glad to have found her out again, and made it up, for her own sake."

"He was remarking only yesterday," observed Mrs. Grace, "how plainly one can see the working of a merciful Providence in this affair. When we came to Briar Cottage six months ago, we had no idea that grandma was living in this part of London—she used to reside miles away from here, but she removed shortly after her last serious disagreement with your father, and he quite lost sight of her. To think we should have been led to choose our new abode within so short a distance of her."

"Father seems quite cheered up by this reconciliation, doesn't he?" said Minnie.

"Yes. I feel sure it has done him a great deal of good. It is what he has been longing and praying for these many years. And it has given him such encouragement to hope that the trouble about his health and future employment may turn out as blessedly in the end."

"But he is getting stronger now, isn't he, mother?"

"Thank God, yes!" said Mrs. Grace fervently. "He is more like himself than he has been yet since the accident. Our worst fear now is that he will be lame for life, and only able to move about with the help of a crutch. And such a disability would be almost certainly fatal to his obtaining any kind of situation—no one would care to employ a cripple. Nay, don't look so utterly woeful, children," she concluded, with a cheery smile. "I am only saying how it appears to human view. God may see something grandly different. And however it may be, it 'must' be for the best."

True to the promise made to poor Ned, Mrs. Grace took time the next morning to look out some of Jamie's old clothes, repair them, and where needful cut them down to what she roughly guessed would be nearer the size required by the smaller boy. Busy as she always was, she spent several hours willingly and even lovingly over this work, for the lad's neglected appearance had appealed to her tenderest compassion. But the clothes were never worn.

At breakfast-time that day, Mrs. Grace had said to Margerie: "You can cut off a slice—a round if you like, for your poor boy. I daresay he will be looking out for it."

"Oh, thank you, grandma!" cried Margerie, all aglow with pleasure. "How thick? As thick as that?"

For in consequence of the powerlessness of the old lady's left arm, Margerie was obliged to cut the bread-and-butter, standing the loaf for safety's sake on its side, and sawing.

Grandma, however, didn't mention butter, and Margerie was afraid to ask.

Sure enough, there was Ned's towsly black head peeping furtively round the pillar of the gate. She caught sight of it as she was putting on her hat and coat for school.

Delighting in the fact that concealment was at an end, and she might do everything openly, Margerie danced down the path, waving her satchel in one hand and the inch-and-a-half thick round of bread in the other.

"Ned, Ned!" she cried, quite excitedly. "This is from 'grandma!' She 'gave' it to me on purpose for you. Just think of that!"

"It's all your doing," said Ned, inserting his white teeth in the slice, as usual, without delay. "Where should I have been last night without you?"

"And mother," supplemented Margie. "Isn't mother 'sweet?' You are going to my house to get some nicer clothes to-day, aren't you?"

Ned nodded as he took a fresh bite. He was not a gushing youth by any means, but his gratitude and appreciation may not have been any the less for that.

"I'm so glad you told," said Margerie. "Grandma is quite kind and nice this morning. Aren't you glad yourself, Ned, that you spoke the truth?"

The waif was sitting on the end of a pile of planks, munching with an air of great satisfaction and swinging one bare foot. Margerie had sat herself beside him, for she was early that morning. It was not enough for her great little heart to dispense charity, she must give herself, in artless friendliness, in frank-spirited sympathy, to sweeten and enrich the dole.

A stranger passing was attracted first to notice the pair by the contrast which they presented. Then his gaze wandered from the boy's grotesquely ragged attire to his face, and rested there with keenest scrutiny. He walked on however, but after traversing about twenty paces turned and gazed at them again, earnestly and long.

"I never thought she'd let me off like that," said Ned. "I made sure I was done for."

"Do you know, Ned," confessed Margerie, after a pause, and twisting the handles of her bag beneath shy, downcast eyes, "I think I ought to tell you. I 'did' pray to God so about you yesterday, and asked Him not to let grandma send you to prison."

"You did?" queried Ned, looking considerably impressed.

"Yes, ever so many times."

"And you think He heard you, and that's why—"

"Of course it was," broke in Margerie, with a conviction of certainty that admitted of no debate. "He always 'hears' us, you know. And whenever He can—I don't mean that exactly, because God can do everything—but—but whenever it won't hurt us, or not be not so good for us any way, He does just what we ask. Like He did for me, about grandma and you. Isn't it kind?"

Again Ned nodded, but his deep eyes were full of thought.

"You'll look nice when I see you again, Ned," said Margerie at parting. "You'll have got your new things on. Perhaps grandma will give me something for you this evening. Anyhow, you look on the window-ledge like you always do; 'I' won't forget."

Neither did she; though, grandma not having understood about the supper arrangement, her provision once more came out of her own private share. But for the first time the carefully folded parcel lay untouched; it was still there when Margerie got up in the morning. And to her real disappointment, no Ned was waiting for her, in the glory of new apparel, by the wood-yard wall.

She concluded that her mother must have given him so much that he did not need her offering, or sent him to someone else. But, in truth, the folks at Briar Cottage were as much perplexed as herself; for although a neat suit was waiting for him, no Ned had appeared.

CHAPTER XIV.

REUNION.

THE family at Briar Cottage were much puzzled by the non-appearance of Margerie's "protégé," for the next day also passed and nothing was seen of him. Margerie was quite troubled about it, and worried her small brains with many fruitless and improbable conjectures as to what had become of him. But strange to say, the person who seemed most disturbed in mind by the lad's unexpected disappearance was grandma herself.

The old lady asked Margerie quite anxiously on the latter's return from school, whether she had seen anything of him. On Sunday morning, she bade the little girl run down to the gate at breakfast-time to ascertain if he were loitering anywhere about, and appeared actually disappointed when she returned with the information,—

"No, grandma, he isn't there."

And if Margerie could have known it, the apparently impassive dame was watching the clock that same evening in nervous impatience for her return from home, to learn whether anything was known about him there. But the other Graces were as much in the dark as themselves.

A street accident seemed the most likely solution of the mystery, though sudden illness and consequent removal to workhouse or hospital, and even arrest by the police for some form of misdemeanour, were ideas which could not fail to present themselves to a grown person's mind. Margerie's chief fear was that in going as appointed to Briar Cottage, poor Ned had lost his way, and might have been wandering about the mazy streets of London ever since.

On Monday morning before school, our little maid was dusting grandma's bed-room, which, like the parlour, was in the front of the house. If it had not been for the uncertainty respecting the fate of the poor waif, I think she would have been really happy, for grandma's manner was far kinder than at first, indeed it seemed to grow more pleasant every day, and that morning she had actually remarked that the furniture, with such good rubbing as "the new housemaid" gave it, was getting quite bright.

I need scarcely say that after such encouragement as this, Margerie rubbed "elbow-grease" into the dingy brass-handled chest-of-drawers upstairs, until she was out of breath and perspiring with the exertion.

It was while she was resting for a minute, and admiring the contrast she imagined she already discerned between the part she had done and the part she hadn't, that the far-away "clang" of the old iron gate caused her to peep between the window shutters, which to save curtains were always half closed, and see who was coming.

A gentleman was approaching the house, accompanied by a boy. Both were well dressed, but something in the appearance of the latter instantly riveted her attention. Thin, pale, with large dark eyes, he was enough like Ned to have been his twin brother, nay, his very self!

Downstairs flew Margerie. "Grandma, grandma! Here's somebody coming! And it 'does' look so like Ned!" she cried.

By that time there was a knock at the door.

"Does Mrs. Grace live here?" queried the stranger.

"Yes, sir," answered Margerie, but with her incredulous gaze fastened upon Ned—for Ned indeed it was, washed, brushed, collared and cuffed, looking positively gentlemanly in a new gray suit and neat silk tie. What agency could be responsible for so marvellous a transformation as this?

Ned coloured and looked half pleased, half shy. Margerie coloured too, and smiled, but was dumbfounded with amazement.

"Can I see her?" asked the gentleman, recalling the little girl to a sense of duty.

But as he spoke, Mrs. Grace herself appeared at the parlour door.

There was a short expressive silence, during which she and the visitor gazed at one another much as Margie and Ned had done.

"Is it—? It—it can't be—" faltered the old lady in trembling accents.

"Your runaway son?" said the stranger. "Indeed it is. And—" (laying a hand affectionately on Ned's shoulder) "'his' son!"

*********

Half an hour later a cab drew up at the gate of Briar Cottage. Minnie and Maud were at school, so they did not see how first of all there sprang out a nice-looking boy, and next a gentleman, and how the gentleman handed out first an old lady and then a little girl, how the little girl ran before and knocked a remarkable knock at the door, how the gentleman carefully supported the old lady, who was rather lame, along the garden path, and how the boy followed behind. Minnie and Maud unfortunately lost all that, but perhaps it was quite as well, for if their voluble tongues had been added to the buzz of excited conversation which was presently going on inside the house above named, the result might have been serious.

"How ever did your father find you out?" asked Margerie, who presently with Ned subsided into a corner, while questions, answers, and explanations were actively going on between their elders.

"He saw you and me talking Friday morning—that last time when you sat down with me, you know," Ned told her; "and he thought I looked like his boy that he'd lost. And he came back to me after you'd gone, and asked me a lot of things, and then he knew I was."

"You thought he was dead, didn't you?"

"Why, it was all lies!—I mean what that woman said!" burst out Ned with sudden energy. "Father had been sending the money for me regular all the time, and she spent it in drink, and then said he hadn't. Father only wishes he could catch her, he'd make her pay for it. But when he wrote to say he was coming home, she took herself off. Oh, she was a bad 'n! What d'you think? She got her own boy to write letters to father, pretending they were from me, saying how happy he was and how awful kind she was, and all that."

Margerie looked shocked. "Just fancy!" she said.

But the thought of this wickedness was soon driven from their minds by present joy and wonder.

"Only to think of you and I being cousins!" she continued, "It 'does' seem funny! We never should have guessed it, should we? Not if we'd guessed for a hundred years. I say, Ned," she added as a new thought struck her, "is that why you wouldn't tell me your name? Because you know it was the same as mine, didn't you?"

"I never thought we were relations," said Ned. "It never entered my mind. Only, somehow, I didn't like to say it was just like yours. It seemed sort of impudence in a poor chap like me; I thought you wouldn't like it. If you had happened to ask me my name first, instead of telling me yours, of course I should have told you. But when I looked at you, all so nice and pretty—well, there, I couldn't bring it out, and that's all about it!"

*********

"Well, the funniest part to my mind," said Minnie a few days later, "is that our little bit of a Margerie should have been the means of bringing all this about. Here's grandma united to her two long-lost sons, and uncle found his boy, and Ned restored to his relations, and uncle promising to give father just the sort of work he can do, all quietly and comfortably at home,—everything coming right all round, like the end of a fairy-tale, and that little midget, who has never set herself up a bit, is the one who has done it all!"

"The 'youngest princess,' of course!" laughed Maud. "Who else should it be?"

"And a princess she is!" added their father. "A princess in the kingdom of heaven. Service in that kingdom is the condition and sign of greatness. Our little Margerie loves to serve. All the happy events which have just now been brought about are the direct outcome of her simple, humble efforts to help those about her—efforts made without any thought of reward. If loving ministry to others is the patent of heavenly nobility—and we have the Lord's own word that it is so,—then our darling is surely a maiden of high rank, a King's daughter, indeed!"

THE END.

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Table of Contents

- THE YOUNGEST PRINCESS:

- CHAPTER I.

- CHAPTER II.

- CHAPTER III.

- CHAPTER IV.

- CHAPTER V.

- CHAPTER VI.

- CHAPTER VII.

- CHAPTER VIII.

- CHAPTER IX.

- CHAPTER X.

- CHAPTER XI.

- CHAPTER XII.

- CHAPTER XIII.

- CHAPTER XIV.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE