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16 “WILD MARGARET.
What lovely ones those are on the table, grandma, and
what cream! How the girls would stare if they saw and
tasted it. You know we drink chalk and water in Lon-
don, grandma!”’ . ; -
‘Bless my soul!’’ exclaimed the old lady. _
‘‘They carry it round in cans and call it mill, but it ig
chalk and water all the same,’’ she said, aughingly. - |
‘‘And now, dear, you must tell me all about yourse
why, we-have done nothing but talk about foolish me since
Icame! Are you quite happy, grandma, and do you like
being housekeeper to a grand earl?”
‘Very much, my dear,”’ said the old lady, with a touch |
of dignity. ‘‘It is amost important and responsible post,”? _
and she stroked the smooth white hand she still held.
“J should think so,’’ said Margaret, with quick sym-
pathy. ‘‘ Keeping any kind of house must be a tremen-
dous affair, but keeping such an enormous place ag this— —
why, grandma, it is like a town, there seems no end to
; yp? we .
it!
The old lady nodded proudly. —
“Yes. Leyton Court isa very grand place, my dear,”
she assented. ‘‘ I suppose it’s one of the grandest, if not
the grandest, in the country. You shall go over it some
day when the earl is away.”’
‘The earl, yes,’’ said Margaret. ‘‘It was very kind of
him to let me come.”
Mrs. Hale tossed her head.
‘‘Oh, my dear, he knows nothing about it!” she said,
‘* Bless me, the earl is too great a person to know anything
about the goings on of such humble individuals as you and.
me. Iam my own mistress in-my own apartments, my
dear, and am quite at liberty to have my own granddaugh-
ter stay with me.”’
‘‘Of course,”’ said the girl quickly. ‘‘ And is he nice?—
the earl, I mean.”
‘* Nice!’ repeated the old lady, as-if there were some-
thing disrespectful inthe word. ‘' Well, ‘nice’ is scarcely
the word—I’ve only seen him half a dozen times since T
came, so I can’t say what he’s like; but he was very |
pleasant then—in his way; my dear.”
Margaret opened her eyes.
‘Not half-a-dozen times in five years? Then he doesn’t :
live here always?”
‘‘ Not always. He is in Spain or Ireland some parts of.
the year, but he lives at the Court during most of the
summer. You see, my dear, great folks like the Earl of
Ferrers keep to themselves more than humble people.
The earl has his own apartments—you can see them from
the drive; they run along the terrace—and his own par-
7- .
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