These were happy hours spent in the schoolroom at Braeside. They never became irksome to Marjory, but they made her long to see more of this "great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world."
Two things were often in her mind at this time--the prophecy about the dark-haired maiden, and the letter of which Mary Ann had told her. She built many hopes upon that letter; night and day she prayed that her father might be found and brought back to her.
The postman only came once a day to Hunters' Brae, and the letter-bag was always taken straight to her uncle's study; so, although Marjory watched carefully for any sign, she did not know whether a reply had been received to that letter her uncle had sent to foreign parts.
One day, coming out of church, Mary Ann managed to whisper to her, "That letter came back, so I expect your father's really dead."
This was a great blow to Marjory. She had hardly realized how much she had hoped, and this bitter disappointment seemed to leave her nothing to hope for. Still she refused to give up altogether, for there was just the chance that the letter might not have been written to her father, as Mary Ann had not actually seen the address on it. Marjory reasoned with herself in this way, for she felt that her life would be strangely empty without the hope of some day finding her father.
"Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod And waits to see it push away the clod, He trusts in God."--ANON.
The months went by, and Marjory and Blanche were happy together. They watched the spring change to summer, and the summer to autumn, with the greatest delight. It was the first time that Blanche had seen the delicate shoots of the snowdrops and crocuses bravely pushing their way through the hard earth, the first time that she had been able to watch the miracle of seed and leaf and flower, and to trace the life of the young birds from their hatching to their flying from the nest. These were annual pleasures to Marjory, but they were much increased by the sweetness of Blanche's companionship. How she delighted in showing her friend where the first bluebells would be found in the wood, and in taking her to search in the most likely places for birds' nests! In one of these searches they found a great treasure. They were walking by the loch, when, amongst the reeds which grew along the water's edge they saw a reed-warbler's nest. What an ingenious construction it was--long and deep and pointed, woven between the reeds, and so firmly fixed and of such a shape that the eggs could not be shaken out, even by the roughest of winds. Marjory was very anxious that Blanche should see a pewit's nest. There were always a certain number of these birds about the moors, and the girls spent a whole morning searching for a nest. But these birds hide their nests so carefully that they are most difficult to find. After much patience and walking up and down over the same ground, causing great uneasiness to the parent birds who circled overhead, crying mournfully, they at last discovered a nest. It was just a little hollow in the ground with some grass in it, and there were the eggs, four of them, so wonderfully speckled that they matched the colour of the ground, and laid so neatly in an almost perfect circle, the large ends outwards and the very narrowly-pointed ones meeting in the centre.