r-bell rang five minutes ago, and Elizabeth has come to see what we
are about."

But at sight of Elizabeth, standing demurely in the doorway, _Cuba
libre_ vanished, and there remained only a very pretty young lady in
the sulks, who had to be coaxed for five minutes more before she would
come to her dinner.

"Am I seventeen, or thirty-seven?" thought Margaret, as she finally led
the way to the dining-room.

CHAPTER IX.

DAY BY DAY.

"Oh! what a mystery
The study is of history!"

For some time things continued to go smoothly and pleasantly at Fernley.
The days slipped away, with nothing special to mark any one, but all
bright with flowers and gay with laughter. The three girls were
excellent friends, and grew to understand each other better and better.
The morning belonged rather to Margaret and Peggy; Rita was always late,
and often preferred to have her breakfast brought to her room, a
practice of which the other girls disapproved highly. They were always
out in the garden by half past eight, with breakfast a thing of the
past, and the day before them. The stocking-basket generally came with
them, and waited patiently in a corner of the green summer-house while
they took their "constitutional," which often consisted of a run through
the waving fields, or a walk along the top of the broad stone wall that
ran around the garden; or again, a tree-top excursion, as they called
it, in the great swing under the chestnut-trees. Then, while they mended
their stockings, Margaret would give Peggy a "talk-lesson," the only
kind that she was willing to receive, on English history, with an
occasional digression to the Trojan war, or the Norse mythology, as the
case might be. Peggy detested history, and knew next to nothing of it,
and this was a grievous thing to Margaret.

"First William the Norman,
Then William his son;
Henry, Stephen and Henry,
Then Richard and John,"

had been one of her own nursery rhymes, and she could not understand any
one's not thrilling responsive when the great names were spoken that
filled her with awe and joy, or with burning resentment.

"But, my dear," she would cry, when Peggy yawned at Canute, and said he
was an old stupid, "my dear, think of the place he holds! think of the
things he did!"

"Well, he's dead!" Peggy would reply; "I don't see what good it does to
bother about him now. Who cares what he did, all that time ago?"

"But," Margaret explai