“The first moment I saw you,” he said, “and there is nothing wonderful in that. There are many like me, but only one Miss Margaret, here or anywhere else.”
The last words he murmured in an undertone, but Margaret made them out. She laughed, not in ridicule, but in pleasure, just touched with amusement. How funny to see him again, and that he should know her; and still more funny, though not disagreeable, that he should speak to her so.
“I was vexed,” she said, “very vexed that a stranger should see me so, my shoe all dirty and my hand all torn--it looked so strange; but I am not vexed now, since it is only you, and not a stranger. Just look at me--such a figure! and what will Bell say?”
“Still Bell! who should we have but Bell?” cried Margaret, the idea of such a domestic change as the displacement of Bell never having so much as crossed her fancy. Then she added, quickly, “But tell me, for I have not heard of you for such a long, long time. You went to the college, Rob?”
She said his name unadvisedly in the first impulse; but looking up at him, and seeing him look at her in a way she was unused to, Margaret’s countenance flamed once more with a momentary blush. She shrank a little. She said to herself that he was not a little boy now as he used to be, and that she would never call him Rob again.
“Yes, Miss Margaret, I went to the college. I went through all the curriculum, and took my degree sometime ago.”
Margaret spoke with a little chill in her tone. She thought that to be a minister implied a withdrawal from life of a very melancholy and serious description, and that she might not be able to keep up easy relations with poor Rob if he had passed that Rubicon. She looked at him earnestly, with a great deal of gravity in her face. Margaret had not known many ministers close at hand, and never any so nearly on a level with her own youthful unimportance as Rob Glen.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No. My poor mother! I will never give her the pleasure I ought. I am not a minister, and never will be. I say it with sorrow and shame.”
“Oh!” cried Margaret, growing so much interested that her breast heaved and her breath came quick. “Oh! and what was that for, Mr.--Rob? You have not done anything wrong?”