‘It’s no use my trying to say how much I shall like it,’ said Margaret, through her tears.

’Well, then, prove your gratitude by keeping those fountains of yours dry for the next two days.  If you don’t, I shall feel queer myself about the lachrymal ducts, and I don’t like that.’

‘I won’t cry a drop,’ said Margaret, winking her eyes to shake the tears off her eye-lashes, and forcing a smile.

’There’s my good girl.  Then we’ll go up-stairs and settle it all.’  Margaret was in a state of almost trembling eagerness, while Mr. Bell discussed his plan with her aunt Shaw, who was first startled, then doubtful and perplexed, and in the end, yielding rather to the rough force of Mr. Bell’s words than to her own conviction; for to the last, whether it was right or wrong, proper or improper, she could not settle to her own satisfaction, till Margaret’s safe return, the happy fulfilment of the project, gave her decision enough to say, ’she was sure it had been a very kind thought of Mr. Bell’s, and just what she herself had been wishing for Margaret, as giving her the very change which she required, after all the anxious time she had had.’

CHAPTER XLVI

ONCE AND NOW

’So on those happy days of yore
Oft as I dare to dwell once more,
Still must I miss the friends so tried,
Whom Death has severed from my side.

But ever when true friendship binds,
Spirit it is that spirit finds;
In spirit then our bliss we found,
In spirit yet to them I’m bound.’ 
UHLAND.

Margaret was ready long before the appointed time, and had leisure enough to cry a little, quietly, when unobserved, and to smile brightly when any one looked at her.  Her last alarm was lest they should be too late and miss the train; but no! they were all in time; and she breathed freely and happily at length, seated in the carriage opposite to Mr. Bell, and whirling away past the well-known stations; seeing the old south country-towns and hamlets sleeping in the warm light of the pure sun, which gave a yet ruddier colour to their tiled roofs, so different to the cold slates of the north.  Broods of pigeons hovered around these peaked quaint gables, slowly settling here and there, and ruffling their soft, shiny feathers, as if exposing every fibre to the delicious warmth.  There were few people about at the stations, it almost seemed as if they were too lazily content to wish to travel; none of the bustle and stir that Margaret had noticed in her two journeys on the London and North-Western line.  Later on in the year, this line of railway should be stirring and alive with rich pleasure-seekers; but as to the constant going to and fro of busy trades-people it would always be widely different from the northern lines.  Here a spectator or two stood lounging at nearly every station, with his hands in his pockets, so absorbed in the simple act of watching, that it made the travellers