But how to accomplish this? True, there was a back door, but she could not bear going out through the connivance of the servant, who was cook and who was a disagreeable woman at all times. Fortune favoured her, however, in a few days. She was walking in the garden one afternoon with her nurse and baby when some one came to the front door with a message, which caused the grumpy man-servant to go into the house for a few seconds. Quick as thought, Margaret slipped out of her prison, and hurried along the road.
She was dizzy with excitement and the sense of freedom--to see Grace--and to arrange about her book.
Her face was glowing as she moved along. She must first see Grace, and then hurry on to do her business.
When she reached Grace's lodgings she was met by a homelike, kindly face; and Jean, forgetting everything but that she had a hard life of it, took her to her arms as though she had been a bairn of her own.
Margaret's tears were never very near the surface, but she had lived a life so unnatural and so repressed, she had been so entirely without kindness or sympathy for so long, that she broke down now, and sobbed upon good, honest, Jean's broad shoulder, sensible only of the sweetness and comfort of the relief.
"My poor bairn, my poor bairn!" Jean kept on saying, and then, recollecting that she ought not to allow her to give way, she said, "but you'll no be fit to see Miss Grace, and you just a blurred objick," and this reflection also stopped Margaret's tears and caused her to lift up her head and try to compose herself.
"How is my sister? How is Grace, dear Jean?"
"She's no just fit to dance the houlachan," said Jean, gaily, who had her own private way of pronouncing most words, "but she's not that bad. Eh, my dear, come and see her; she's been wearying for you, sair, sair."
Margaret went upstairs, and in another moment the sisters were once more together.
Grace was lying on the sofa, and Margaret found her looking better than she expected. She was a softened edition of the old Grace, still fitful, capricious, but full of tenderness for her sister, whose life she had so completely spoiled.
"Why, darling, have you never been here before?" she asked; "I have sent you so many notes and have had such scanty answers. You never tell me of yourself; you never tell me what I want to know."