Hunters Marjory | Page 7

with agitation, her cheeks were scarlet, and her dark eyes flashed upon her uncle as she replied,--
"I want you to send me to school. I don't want to live on your charity any longer. I never knew I was till to-day," with a sob; then, piteously, "Won't you send me to school, Uncle George?"
"My dear child!" exclaimed the doctor, "what is all this? Who has been talking to you and putting such nonsense into your head?" looking at his niece in astonishment.
The quiet, usually almost sullen girl was transformed into a passionate little fury for the time being, and her uncle hardly recognized her. She burst out again,--
"Mary Ann Smylie looks down on me because I don't go to school. She says I can't ever be a lady; and she says that you get no money for my keep, and that I am no better than a charity child. I want to learn what other girls learn. I want you to send me to school, and I want you to tell me about my father, and to let me go into my mother's room!"
The child almost screamed these last words, and stamped upon the floor to emphasize them.
The doctor, now thoroughly aroused, rose from his chair, saying very sternly,--
"Marjory, I cannot alter my decision upon these matters. I do not wish you to go to school. I refuse to tell you any more than you have already been told about your father. I have promised that you shall go into your mother's room and take possession of it on your fifteenth birthday. That is enough. I am grieved that you should have listened to vulgar gossip about our affairs; but I may tell you that your mother left money to provide for you ten times over, if need be."
"Then you are unkind and cruel not to use it to send me to school and let me have what other girls have," cried Marjory passionately.
"Marjory," said her uncle quietly, "I cannot listen to you while you are in this mood. You had better go, and come back again when you can talk more reasonably."
"Yes, I will go, and I wish I need never come back. I hate everything, and I wish I were dead."
With these words she flung out of the room, rushed blindly through the house into the garden and on into the wood, where she threw herself down under a tree, and sobbed out her grief to the faithful Silky until Mrs. Forester found her.
Dr. Hunter was very much troubled and puzzled by his niece's behaviour. Never before had she given way to such an outburst. He had not believed her capable of such a storm of passion, and felt himself quite at a loss. He was grieved and shocked beyond measure by Marjory's words. "Unkind, cruel," he muttered to himself. "Surely not. I love the little thing as though she were my own." And while Marjory was weeping bitterly under the tree in the wood, her uncle, very sorrowful and thoughtful, was pacing up and down his study wondering what he could do for the best. It seemed all the more grievous as, only that afternoon, he had been making plans for Marjory with Mrs. Forester--that she should share Blanche's lessons and enjoy her companionship.
Mrs. Forester had heard much of the doctor and his niece from the mutual friend in London who had written to the doctor, and she knew exactly how to manage things, so that in the course of one short hour plans were made which were to alter Marjory's whole existence.
But she, poor child, knew nothing of this, and her grief was bitter--the more so as she slowly realized that she had been wrong to give way to her passion. First, she had called Mary Ann Smylie a beast. Well, she had been very much shocked once to hear a child in the street use that word to another, but she herself had used it quite easily, and still felt as if she would like to use it again; but, worst of all, she had called her uncle unkind and cruel. Thinking over the scene in the study, she remembered the look on his face as she said these words. "It was as if I had struck him," she thought; and then came more tears and sobs.
Mrs. Forester's motherly heart yearned over the girl as she made her confession. Brokenly and with many tears the story was told, and relief came to Marjory in the telling of it. Blanche, with instinctive tact, had walked away a little distance with Silky, so that Marjory should feel free to talk to her mother. When the recital was over, Mrs. Forester said cheerfully, "I told you I thought I should be able to help you. First of all,