As soon as she had heard where she was to go, Margaret looked her destination up on the map. But Windy Gap was too small a place to be marked. Chailfield, however, was the nearest station, and that was on the map, as was also Seabourne. The latter place was a large and fashionable watering town renowned for its schools, in one of which Miss Bidwell had been a governess for some years. Many were the dictations in English, French, and German, descriptive of the town and the surrounding downs which Margaret had written, and it was strange to think that she was now about to see these places for herself.
The few days that intervened between the Thursday on which she had heard that she was to go away and the following Tuesday could not pass too quickly for Margaret, and when Monday dawned and the actual packing of her trunk could begin, she was in a high, though carefully repressed state of excitement. Lizzie, the housemaid, who had been getting her clothes ready during the last few days, fully sympathised with the eager impatience which Margaret showed that everything should be ready in time.
"For if I had had the dull time that Miss Margaret has had ever since Miss Bidwell went away, not that she was very gay company, I should be off my head with joy too."
"Is Miss Margaret off her head with joy, then?" said the kitchen-maid, to whom the remark had been addressed.
"Well, in a quiet way of her own she is," said Lizzie. "She don't sing nor dance like other young ladies would, but her eyes shine like stars, and now and again she smiles quiet to herself."
But, after all, Margaret did not have Mrs. Parkes as a travelling companion. The day before they were to start for Chailfield two things happened. Scarlet fever broke out in Clayton, and Mrs. Parkes fell down the cellar stairs and broke her leg.
"The departure of my granddaughter, who was to have left to-morrow morning by the nine-thirty train, must therefore be delayed," said Mr. Anstruther, "until I can procure for her a suitable escort."
This was said to Dr. Knowles, who had been summoned to set the broken leg.
"Departure delayed! Escort! Fiddlesticks!" said Dr. Knowles in his most staccato manner. "Don't keep her an hour longer here than necessary. In her run-down state she would be just the sort of person to go down with fever. The sooner she is away from here the better."