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Nor did this glimmer of a quenched fire seem to light him to a quicker sense of his debasement. In any mood, in any grief, in any torture of the mind or body, Meg's work must be done. She sat down to her task, and plied it. Night, midnight. Still she worked. She had a meagre fire, the night being very cold; and rose at intervals to mend it.
Meg looked back to the shop many times before turning the corner of the street, and saw Mrs Blossom's round face, with its white cap border, still leaning over the door, looking after them, and nodding pleasantly each time she caught Meg's backward glance.
Readers of "Little Women" will remember what a child's paradise "Meg's first home" was, with its garden full of fruit-trees and shade, and its old empty barn which the children alternately turned into a drawing-room for company, a gymnasium for romps, and a theatre for dramatic performances.
But I maun tell you the story frae the beginnin'. You've mibby heard me speak aboot Meg Mortimer's mither that used to bide at The Drum. Meg's in a big wey o' doin' noo in Edinboro; but I've seen the day, I'm thinkin'! Weel div I mind when her mither flitted ower frae Powsoddie. She cam' along to oor hoose to seek the len' o' twa kists, juist to gie her flittin' some appearance on the cairts.
This handsome, merry gentleman with thick, brown hair as crinkly as her own; who was domineered over and palpably adored by these two, to her, equally amazing girls seemed so very, very young to be anybody's father. He frankly owned to enjoying things. Now, according to Meg's experience, grown-up people elderly people seldom enjoyed anything; above all, never alluded to their enjoyment.
March is as brisk and cheery, though rather grayer, than when we saw her last, and just now so absorbed in Meg's affairs that the hospitals and homes still full of wounded 'boys' and soldiers' widows, decidedly miss the motherly missionary's visits. John Brooke did his duty manfully for a year, got wounded, was sent home, and not allowed to return.
"Her dragoman who took her into the desert has returned to Luxor. I haven't seen him he could tell us everything we want to know." "The news came from him?" Meg's voice was a stinging reproach. "Yes. He only remained in Luxor a few hours; he was going to his home in Assiut, but he spread the story." There was a pause. "He took Millicent to Michael?" "He took her into the desert; they met."
She was not afraid of any storm for herself though she had never heard wind roar and wail as this did now, but how could she bear to have her "Guardian" suffer. Even Meg's healthy youngsters sometimes had croup and frightened their mother "outen her seventy senses," and the croup usually followed a prolonged playing in flooded gutters during a rain storm. "I must find a place!
"Dig here, Bobby!" cried Meg, when she had rapped the earth around the crazy chimney and persuaded herself that it sounded "hollow." So Bobby dug. And presently his shovel struck something. "Oh, Bobby, what is it?" shrieked Meg. "Is it an iron chest?" She really half-believed that Bobby had found the pirate's buried treasure. The twins were scrambling over the rocks and they heard Meg's cry.
The frame at which she had worked, was put away upon a shelf and covered up. The chair in which she had sat, was turned against the wall. A history was written in these little things, and in Meg's grief-worn face. Oh! who could fail to read it! Meg strained her eyes upon her work until it was too dark to see the threads; and when the night closed in, she lighted her feeble candle and worked on.
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