Part 3 (2/2)

Presently the low murmur broke into audible farewells; chairs were pushed back, feet sc.r.a.ped in the hall.

”Good-night, then!” said Mrs. Carr-Boldt's clear tones, ”and so sorry to have--Good-night, Mr. Paget!--Oh, thank you--but I'm well wrapped.

Thank you! Good-night, dear! I'll see you again soon--I'll write.”

And then came the honking of the motor-car, and a great swish where it grazed a wet bush near the house. Somebody lowered the gas in the hall, and Mrs. Paget's voice said regretfully, ”I wish we had had a fire in the parlor--just one of the times!--but there's no help for it.” They all came in, Margaret flushed, starry-eyed; her father and mother a little serious. The three blinked at the brighter light, and fell upon the cooling chops as if eating were the important business of the moment.

”We waited the pudding,” said Julie. ”What is it?”

”Why--” Mrs. Paget began, hesitatingly. Mr. Paget briskly took the matter out of her hands.

”This lady,” he said, with an air of making any further talk unnecessary, ”needs a secretary, and she has offered your sister Margaret the position. That's the whole affair in a nutsh.e.l.l. I'm not at all sure that your mother and I think it a wise offer for Margaret to accept, and I want to say here and now that I don't want any child of mine to speak of this matter, or make it a matter of general gossip in the neighborhood. Mother, I'd like very much to have Blanche make me a fresh cup of tea.”

”Wants Margaret!” gasped Julie, unaffected--so astonis.h.i.+ng was the news--by her father's unusual sternness. ”Oh, Mother! Oh, Mark! Oh, you lucky thing! When is she coming down here?”

”She isn't coming down here--she wants Mark to go to her--that's it,”

said her mother.

”Mark--in New York!” shrilled Theodore. Julie got up to rush around the table and kiss her sister; the younger children laughed and shouted.

”There is no occasion for all this,” said Mr. Paget, but mildly, for the fresh tea had arrived. ”Just quiet them down, will you, Mother? I see nothing very extraordinary in the matter. This Mrs.--Mrs. Carr Boldt--is it?--needs a secretary and companion; and she offers the position to Mark.”

”But--but she never even saw Mark until to-day!” marvelled Julie.

”I hardly see how that affects it, my dear!” her father observed unenthusiastically.

”Why, I think it makes it simply extraordinary!” exulted the generous little sister. ”Oh, Mark, isn't this just the sort of thing you would have wished to happen! Secretary work,--just what you love to do! And you, with your beautiful handwriting, you'll just be invaluable to her! And your German--and I'll bet you'll just have them all adoring you--!”

”Oh, Ju, if I only can do it!” burst from Margaret, with a little childish gasp. She was sitting back from the table, twisted about so that she sat sideways, her hands clasped about the top bar of her chair-back. Her tawny soft hair was loosened about her face, her dark eyes aflame. ”Lenox, she said,” Margaret went on dazedly; ”and Europe, and travelling everywhere! And a hundred dollars a month, and nothing to spend it on, so I can still help out here! Why, it--I can't believe it!”--she looked from one smiling, interested face to another, and suddenly her radiance underwent a quick eclipse. Her lip trembled, and she tried to laugh as she pushed her chair back, and ran to the arms her mother opened. ”Oh, Mother!” sobbed Margaret, clinging there, ”do you want me to go--shall I go? I've always been so happy here, and I feel so ashamed of being discontented,--and I don't deserve a thing like this to happen to me!”

”Why, G.o.d bless her heart!” said Mrs. Paget, tenderly, ”of course you'll go!”

”Oh, you silly! I'll never speak to you again if you don't!” laughed Julie, through sympathetic tears.

Theodore and Duncan immediately burst into a radiant reminiscence of their one brief visit to New York; Rebecca was heard to murmur that she would ”vithet Mark thome day”; and the baby, tugging at his mother's elbow, asked sympathetically if Mark was naughty, and was caught between his sister's and his mother's arms and kissed by them both. Mr. Paget, picking his paper from the floor beside his chair, took an arm-chair by the fire, stirred the coals noisily, and while cleaning his gla.s.ses, observed rather huskily that the little girl always knew, she could come back again if anything went wrong.

”But suppose I don't suit?” suggested Margaret, sitting back on her heels, refreshed by tears, and with her arms laid across her mother's lap.

”Oh, you'll suit,” said Julie, confidently; and Mrs. Paget smoothed the girl's hair back and said affectionately, ”I don't think she'll find many girls like you for the asking, Mark!”

”Reading English with the two little girls,” said Margaret, dreamily, ”and answering notes and invitations. And keeping books--”

”You can do that anyway,” said her father, over his paper.

”And dinner lists, you know, Mother--doesn't it sound like an English story!” Margaret stopped in the middle of an ecstatic wriggle.

”Mother, will you pray I succeed?” she said solemnly.

”Just be your own dear simple self, Mark,” her mother advised.

”January!” she added, with a great sigh. ”It's the first break, isn't it, Dad? Think of trying to get along without our Mark!”

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