Part 11 (1/2)

”Well, _as_ you do, then. He talks William the Conqueror and all those old fuddy-duddies by the yard, but he can't make me see the use of them, and you can't. Now if you would give me some mathematics; _that_ is what I want. If you would give me some solid geometry, Margaret!”

But here poor Margaret hung her head and blushed, and confessed that she had no solid geometry to give. Her geometry had been fluid, or rather, vapourous, and had floated away, unthought of and unregretted.

”I am sorry and ashamed,” she said. ”Of course I ought to be able to teach it, and if I go into a school, of course I shall have to study again and make it up, so that I can. But it never can be possible that triangles should be as interesting as human beings, Peggy.”

”A great deal more interesting,” Peggy maintained, ”when the human beings are dead and buried hundreds of years.”

”One word more, and I have done,” said poor Margaret. ”You used an expression, dear,--old fuddy-duddies, was it? I never heard it before.

Do you think it is an elegant expression, Peggy dear?”

”It's as good as I am girl!” said Peggy; and Margaret shut her eyes, and felt despair in her heart. But soon she felt a warm kiss on her forehead, and Peggy was promising to be good, and to try harder, and even to do her best to learn the difference between the two Harolds,--Hardrada and G.o.dwinsson.

And if she would promise to do that, might she just climb up now and see what that nest was, out on the fork there?

Perhaps Rita would come down soon, with her guitar or her embroidery-frame; and they would sing and chatter till the early dinner.

Rita's songs were all of love and war, boleros and bull-fights. She sang them with flas.h.i.+ng ardour, and the other girls heard with breathless delight, watching the play of colour and feeling, that made her face a living transcript of what she sang. But when she was tired, she would hand the guitar to Margaret, and beg her to sing ”something cool, peaceful, sea-green, like yourself, Marguerite!”

”Am I sea-green?” asked Margaret.

”Ah! cherub! you understand me! My blood is in a fever with these songs of Cuba. I want coolness, icy caves, pine-trees in the wind!”

So Margaret would take the guitar, and sing in her calm, smooth contralto the songs her father used to love: songs of the North, that had indeed the sound of the sea and the wind in them.

”It was all for our rightful king That we left fair Scotland's strand.

It was all for our rightful king, We ever saw Irish land, My dear, We ever saw Irish land!”

The plaintive melody rose and fell like the waves on the sh.o.r.e; and Rita would curl herself like a panther in the sun, and murmur with pleasure, and call for more. Then, perhaps, Margaret would sing that lovely ballad of Hogg's, which begins,

”Far down by yon hills of the heather sae green, And down by the corrie that sings to the sea, The bonnie young Flora sat sighing her lane, The dew on her plaid and the tear in her e'e.

”She looked on a boat with the breezes that swung Afar on the wave, like a bird on the main, And aye as it lessened, she sighed and she sung, 'Fareweel to the lad I shall ne'er see again!'”

But Rita had no patience with Flora McDonald.

”Why did she not go with him?” she asked, when Margaret, after the song was over, told the brave story of Prince Charlie's escape after Culloden, and of how the n.o.ble girl, at the risk of her own life, led the prince, disguised as her waiting-woman, through many weary ways, till they reached the seash.o.r.e where the vessel was waiting to take him to France.

”He could not speak!” said Margaret. ”He just took her hand, and stood looking at her; but she could hardly see him for her tears. Then he took off his cap, and stooped down and kissed her twice on the forehead; and so he went. But after he was in the boat, he turned again, and said to her:

”'After all that has happened, I still hope, madam, we shall meet in St.

James's yet!' But of course they never did.”

”But why did she not go with him?” demanded Rita. ”She had spirit, it appears. Why did she let him go without her?”

Margaret gazed at her wide-eyed.

”He was going into exile,” she said. ”She had done all she could, she had saved his life; there was nothing more to be done.”

”But--that she should leave him! Did she not love him? was he faithless?”