While she spoke she was piloting Margaret across the lawn, past the shady tree, in full view of the windows where she had been sitting, towards a little grass path that cut in two the wide border of gay herbaceous flowers that backed the far end of the garden, and led suddenly to a flight of brick steps which descended to a walled-in kitchen garden below. This being on a much lower level than the lawn was quite invisible from the windows. A wide path ran along beside the rock-work that banked up the lawn, and at the end of the path there was a comfortable little summer-house furnished with a table and chairs.
"I have made this snug little retreat my own," said Eleanor, as she led the way into it and invited Margaret to be seated. "I come here in the afternoons and do my lessons, and it is already quite understood by Mrs. Murray and the servants that when I am working here I do not like to be disturbed. She is very good and leaves me to myself now a lot. At first she was rather inclined to come and talk to me a good deal, but I think she sees now that I hate wasting time talking, and so lets me alone. Well, now I am sure you are longing to hear all about my arrival and my first meeting with Mrs. Murray. So I will tell you about that first, and keep my best news to the last."
If Margaret had said what was in her mind at that moment, she would have said that what she longed most to hear was herself telling Eleanor that she wanted to change back into her proper self again; but somehow, though the words were on the tip of her tongue, she could not bring herself to utter them. With a sinking heart she was beginning to realise that Eleanor, far from wanting to be herself again, would much rather remain Margaret Anstruther. And it was dreadful to think of the disappointment that she must cause her when she said what she had come to say.
"Well, now to begin at the beginning," Eleanor said, leaning comfortably back on her chair with her hands lying loosely on her lap. Margaret noticed that three fingers of her right hand were in bandages. "I can confess now what I am sure you never guessed at the time, and that is that I was in a horrid fright when I said good-bye to you at the station, and I believe at the very last minute if I could have jumped back into the train I would have done so, but Mrs. Murray was so kind that I soon got over my nervousness. Not that it would have mattered, though, if I hadn't," she added with a little laugh, "for Margaret, I found, was expected to be shy. I suppose, as poor Mrs. Murray is so dreadfully deaf, it is easier to pass myself off as you than it might otherwise have been, but certainly if I have made any glaring mistakes she has never noticed them, and if I really had been you my task could not have been simpler. Of course, the first evening she asked me a great many questions about Mr. Anstruther and your home, and your lessons, and your governess, and why the doctor had said you were to go away, and so on, and I answered them all in first-class style, for I have everything you had told me fresh in my mind. Oh, but what do you think! Our plans might have been wrecked at the outset by something neither of us had foreseen. That evening, just as we were going to bed, Mrs. Murray said to me in the quiet, low tone in which she always speaks, and which it makes it dreadfully difficult to hear what she says, that the first thing next morning I must write to my grandfather, and tell him of my safe arrival. I was dismayed, if you like, for I had no notion what your handwriting was like, or any hope of copying it if I knew, but I kept my countenance, and gave no sign of dismay. And the next morning at breakfast, while cutting a piece of bread in half, the knife slipped and I cut the three middle fingers of my right hand so badly that each of them had to be wrapped up in bandages. So you see that to hold a pen was impossible, and Mrs. Murray wrote instead of me to announce my safe arrival here."