The Rebellion of Margaret | Page 3

are you talking? Who is this Eleanor Humphreys? Where is she?"
[Illustration: "MARGARET," SAID THE OLD MAN, BREAKING INTO SPEECH AT LAST, AND IN A VERY HARSH VOICE, "WHAT FOLLY IS THIS?"]
And with both hands resting on his stick, which was planted firmly on the ground in front of him, he darted suspicious searching glances among the surrounding trees.
At the sound of her name uttered in those hard tones Margaret had sprung to her feet; her face, pale before, had turned yet paler, and her big hazel eyes fastened themselves with a terror-stricken expression on her grandfather's face.
"How dare you encourage people to come into my grounds and talk to you without my permission? Have I not expressly forbidden you to make acquaintances without my knowledge. Who is this Eleanor Humphreys? Where is she hiding? What does she mean by coming here and asking you to accompany her to tennis parties and dances? Answer me. Tell me who she is, and how she comes to be here without my knowledge."
"She is nobody; she--she is nowhere," stammered Margaret, whose trembling lips could scarcely frame the words.
"Nobody, nowhere," thundered the old man. "Don't dare to trifle with me, Margaret. Show her to me immediately, and I will tell her, whoever she may be, what I think of her for presuming to come here without my leave."
Margaret's lips gave a sudden little twitch, which showed that, badly frightened as she was, a hint of the humour of the situation had dawned upon her mind.
"You--you can't scold her, grandfather. She--she isn't real. She is my dream friend."
There was a momentary silence, during which Margaret, glancing timidly at her grandfather's stern and angry face and reading there the contemptuous scorn which he felt for her unworthy self, wished that the earth might open and swallow her up. But as it remained unyieldingly firm she had perforce to remain above ground and endure to the full his prolonged scrutiny.
"So," he said at length, and if anything had been wanting to complete her discomfiture and to drive away any lingering feeling of mirth, his tone would have been more than sufficient for that purpose, "so this is the manner in which you pass your time. In dreaming about imaginary people, and in holding conversations remarkable for their utter inanity with them, about tennis parties and dances and pink chiffon parasols."
Failing a yawning chasm at her feet, Margaret would have been thankful if that same pink parasol had been a reality at that moment, and in her hand, so that she could have held it as a screen between her crimsoning face and his pitiless old eyes. She writhed inwardly to think that all the idle fancies in which she had been indulging during the afternoon had been poured into her grandfather's angry ears. And it was positive agony to her shy nature to know that her shadowy friend was no longer her own secret.
"Kindly have the goodness to answer my question. Seeing that but a few minutes have elapsed since you were proving yourself capable of sustaining both sides of a conversation, I think that it cannot be too great a strain upon you to reply to my question now. Do you hear me?"
All trace of anger had vanished now both from Mr. Anstruther's face and from his manner, and he spoke in the cold, precise tones, and framed his sentences in the rather stilted manner habitual to him.
"Yes, grandfather," Margaret gasped in a very small voice. She was rarely at ease with her grandfather--he had never taken any pains to render her so--and when he addressed her in tones of semi-sarcasm she grew so disconcerted that she could not answer him coherently. And, as the more confused she became the more caustic his tongue waxed; their interviews, brief though they were, often concluded with anger on his part and with tears on hers.
"Then I should be obliged if you would have the kindness to answer me."
"I--I forget what it was that you asked me," stammered Margaret.
"Oh, I do not flatter myself that my questions can vie in interest with those addressed to you by your imaginary friend. Nevertheless, I should be glad if you will kindly pay attention to them. I asked you if it was in this profitable manner that you usually passed your afternoons now."
"Sometimes, grandfather."
"Then I will find you something else to do. What is it that you ought to be doing at this hour?"
"Three to four. Take exercise," said Margaret in the tone of a child repeating a lesson.
"And this is the way in which you take it? By sitting and dreaming away your time in nonsense and folly and in making up silly, idle conversations with idiotic creatures of your own imagination. I gave even you, Margaret, credit for more sense. Aren't