“If your fool of a man hadn’t got in the
way, the cat would have escaped,” William hotly
cried. Indignant he turned. Banishment was
nothing then; in time it came to be a bitter thing.
Mr. Marrapit had raged on to Mr. Fletcher, yet writhing.
“You hear that?” he had cried. “Dolt!
You are responsible for this!” He touched the
blood-flecked side, the abrased ear; clasped close
the Rose; called for warm water.
Mr. Fletcher clapped a hand to his wound as shakily
he rose.
“I go to rescue his cat!” he said; “I’m
near worried to death by ’ounds. I’m
a dolt. I’m responsible. It’s
’ard,—damn ’ard. I’m
a gardener, I am; not a dog muzzle.”
A dimness clouded Margaret’s beautiful eyes
as this bitter picture— she had watched
it—was again reviewed. She murmured
“Oh, Bill!”; stretched her soft arms to
the night; moved her pretty lips in a message to her
lover; snuggled between the sheets and made melancholy
her bedfellow.
By seven she was up and in the fresh garden.
George was before her.
She cried brightly: “Why, how early you
are!” and ran to him—very pretty
in her white dress: at her breast a rose, the
poem fluttering in her hand.
“Yes; for once before you.”
George’s tone did not give back her mood, purposely
keyed high. She played on it again: “Turning
a new leaf?”
He drummed at the turf with his heel: “Yes—for
to-day.” He threw out a hand towards her:
“But in the same old book. I’ve had
eight—nine years of it, and now there are
three more months.”
“Poor George! But only three months, think
how they will fly!”
He was desperately gloomy: “I haven’t
your imagination. Each single day of them will
mean a morning—here; a night—here.”
“Oh, is it so hard?”
“Yes, now. It’s pretty deadly now.
You know, when I wasn’t precisely killing myself
with overwork, I didn’t mind so much. When
it was three or four years, anyway, before I could
possibly be free, a few extra months or so through
failing an exam, didn’t trouble me. But
this is different. I was right up against getting
clear of all this”—he comprehended
garden and house in a sweep of the hand—“counted
it a dead certainty—and here I am pitched
back again.”
“But, George, you did work so hard this time.
It isn’t as though you had to blame yourself.”
She put a clinging hand into his arm. “You
can suffer no—remorse. That is what
makes failure so dreadful—the knowledge
that things might have been otherwise if one had liked.”
George laughed quite gaily. Gloom never lay long
upon this young man.
“You’re a sweet little person,”
he said. “You ought to be right, but you
are wrong. When I didn’t work I didn’t
mind failing. It’s when I’ve tried
that I get sick.”
Margaret’s eyes brightened. There was melancholy
here.
