The Rebellion of Margaret | Page 7

content simply because she knew no better one. She had not realised before in what a very different fashion other girls were brought up. But now her eyes were open. That simple phrase, "She does not know, poor child, what she is missing," had told her more than many lengthy explanations could have done.
Looking back afterwards on those moments during which she had stood gazing with unseeing eyes after the departing figures of the two men, they seemed to her to make a dividing line between all her previous and her after life. She had thought that the departure of Miss Bidwell had been an epoch in it; now that sank into comparative insignificance, for after all her departure had left her, Margaret, unchanged.
But the same could not be said of this event. Hitherto she had blindly, unquestioningly accepted her grandfather's right to order every detail of her life, and if she had thought about the matter at all she had doubtless supposed that his authority over her would always be as absolute as it was now.
However, it was one thing to discover that her childhood had missed, and her girlhood was losing, many of the pleasures that should rightly belong to them, but to remedy this state of affairs was quite another. Although the idea that her grandfather had been unduly strict with her had been thus suddenly brought home to her, it did not in the least lesson the habitual awe in which she stood of him, and as she was obliged to continue to adhere to the rules he had laid down for her, she began to wonder whether she had not been happier when she had not dreamed of questioning his right to exact such unquestioning obedience from her.
"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise," she quoted to herself, and what was the good of knowing that her life was so dull if she dared not do anything to make it less so. Since Miss Bidwell's departure she had fallen into the habit of talking aloud to herself, for she found that during her many long, lonely hours the sound even of her own voice made some companionship for her, and her conversations with Eleanor Humphreys were now no longer carried on in the recesses of her mind but out loud.
It was a dangerous habit, as she was to discover ere long, especially as Eleanor had of late, since in fact the seeds of discontent had been sown in Margaret's mind, not stopped at describing her gaieties to her friend, but tried to persuade her to break bounds and to come and join in the revels.
And that was what had brought Margaret into such serious trouble with her grandfather.
CHAPTER III
MARGARET STARTS ON A JOURNEY
The immediate result of the conversation that Mr. Anstruther had overheard between his granddaughter and her imaginary friend was a visit from the doctor to Margaret. Mr. Anstruther was sure that Margaret would never have dreamed of rebelling against him even in her thoughts had she not been ill, and within an hour from the time he had dispatched his granddaughter in disgrace to the house, Mr. Anstruther followed her there accompanied by Dr. Knowles. Dr. Knowles it was whose conversation with the clergyman Margaret had in her turn overheard from behind the hedge, and if he had pitied Margaret before, his pity increased tenfold, when by a series of skilfully put questions he had drawn from her a description of her daily life. But he smiled reassuringly at her as he bade her good-bye, and promised to send her a prescription that he knew she would like.
But though, when she came to hear of it, Margaret approved this prescription, her grandfather strongly objected to it when it was first mooted to him. For it was change of air that the doctor prescribed--change of air immediate and complete.
"If you could fill this house with young people, and let her lead a gay, lively life here, I don't say that it might not do her as much good as a change of climate, but," perceiving that Mr. Anstruther's face was set like a flint at a mere suggestion of such a thing, "a change would be better still. She has been too long in this flat, low-lying district; Brighton or Eastbourne, or any part of the Sussex Downs, would be of immense benefit to her."
"And if I follow neither of these alternatives," said Mr. Anstruther harshly, "if I let her go on as she is doing now, what then?"
"Then I think you will run a great risk of having a morbid, melancholy young lady on your hands--a delicate one too--for she is in danger of becoming anemic, unless her health improves."
Dr. Knowles spoke so emphatically that, averse though he was to the