Chapter XI: "ned's Enough!"

WHEN Mrs. Grace entered the kitchen, the newly-lighted fire which Margerie had left untended during her strange talk with the intruder was invisible, thus exposing her to fresh reprimands from her still unreconciled grandmother. But the child's mind was so full of her startling discovery that these did not impress her so deeply as they otherwise might; though her grandmother's stern manner caused her to realize, with some dismay, how she had, by her willingly given promise not to "tell" of the boy's thefts, cut herself off from the chance of proving her own innocence.

This, however, troubled her less than the dreadful probability he had hinted at, that he might actually starve to death! Of course Margerie had heard of very poor people almost starving in the winter, but the reality had never before come so close to her as it now did in the person of that poor boy, with his bony arms and sharpened face, and pitiful, hungry dark eyes. The trouble of her own unmerited disgrace seemed to dwindle into nothing beside so terrible a possibility.

Grandma hardly spoke to her during breakfast, but she allowed her the usual three slices of bread-and-butter. One of these, or rather part of two, Margerie managed with some difficulty to secrete and carry from the table under her little apron. And this, let me say, not without considerable exercise of self-denial, for after her meagre fare of the day before she could well have eaten more, rather than less, than her usual portion.

Nobody would have guessed that, however, who saw the bright face with which, in the shadow of the wood-yard gateway, she brought the fragments out of her satchel.

"Here's some bread-and-butter," she said. "Perhaps I'll be able to save you more another time. I'll save you a bit anyhow at tea-time, if grandma isn't looking. But she's got dreadful sharp eyes!"

"Do you live there?" asked the boy, already munching.

"Yes. But that isn't my home," Margerie told him, loitering with friendly air and swinging her school-bag. "Mrs. Grace is my grandmother—"

"Mrs. 'who?'" interrupted the waif, with his mouth inconveniently full.

"Mrs. Grace. I'm Margerie Grace. I'm stopping with her a bit because she has got a bad arm."

The boy's industrious jaws had suddenly ceased their masticatory exercises as he put his last query, and only resumed work in a slow, absentminded sort of way towards the end of Margie's reply. He was staring hard at her all the while with his owl-like eyes.

"What's your name?" asked the little girl.

He appeared to hesitate for a moment, and then said, "Ned."

"Ned what?"

"Nothing. Ned's enough!" returned the boy, shortly.

Just then the first quarter past nine chimed from a neighbouring church tower, and simultaneously the last morsel of bread-and-butter disappeared.

"I must make haste now," said Margerie, "or I shall be late for school. I'll tell you what. I'll put anything I can save for you out on the scullery window-ledge last thing to-night. I'll wrap it in paper all nice so that the cats won't get it, and you'll find it there. But you won't come in the house any more, will you? Because grandma would be so angry, and besides that I'm sure it can't be right."

"On my word and honour I won't," Ned assured her. "I'll sleep in that summer-house place at the end of the garden, like I used. You'll let me do that and won't peach, won't you?"

"I don't think there can be any harm in that," said Margerie. "But isn't it a very nasty place to sleep in? All earwigs and things! Have you slept there often?"

"Off and on for a couple of months or so," Ned confessed. "It's 'most a wonder the old girl hasn't twigged it before now. I never came inside the house till that night I came with the candle-end to look for grub. I daresay I might, though, if I'd known it was so jolly easy."

"Well, anyhow, you won't again; that's a promise. Now, good-bye."

With a bright confiding smile, and gay wave of her satchel, Margerie ran off, turning many times to throw back another pleasant glance ere she wholly passed from view.

"'Well!'" quoth Ned to himself, never taking his gaze from the little figure until it disappeared round a bend in the road. "She's a one-er! She's a—she's a fairy, and no mistake! She's got a face like a flower! Think I'm going to set myself a-side of 'her?' Not if I know it! She'd think it was all my cheek. Ned's enough!"

At dinner-time, Margerie actually contrived to slip a piece of the cold mutton off her plate while grandma's back was turned, the worst that followed being a reprimand for "bolting" her meat without an adequate proportion of potatoes. And at tea, she secured another share for Ned from her own bread-and-butter. She was not conscious of any wrong in this. After grandma gave it her, it was her own, she thought. And her motive was so good and pure that it really almost excused the deception which it involved.

Minnie and Maud came to see her in the evening. Grandma, somewhat to her surprise, said not a word to them about her supposed naughtiness. But she also, by taking care to be continually within hearing of the girls, and peremptorily forbidding Margerie even to accompany them alone to the gate, debarred her from communicating her version of the story. Mrs. Grace, senior, had resolved that her daughter-in-law should be the first to hear of Margerie's delinquencies and from her own lips. She therefore purposed to call at Briar Cottage as soon as the weather, just then very showery, should permit.

For the next few mornings Margerie met Ned regularly as she went to school, and as regularly bestowed upon him a portion of her own breakfast. And every evening saw a little paper parcel, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, according to Margerie's own appetite, lying on the scullery windowsill. She found it easier to give up the whole of her supper-slice than any part of her allowance for tea, but more difficult to evade grandma's eyes. She had sometimes to pretend to be eating when she was not, and I am glad to say that this dissimulation was so distasteful to her, that before the close of the second day of it she was seriously casting about in her mind for a better means of helping poor Ned.

If we know a thing to be good, it is so much better to do it openly, even if we get into trouble in consequence, than to deceive. Deceit is such a mean, ugly sin. Margerie was beginning to feel that it stained what otherwise would have been a right action, but more than suspecting that grandma would forbid all further intercourse with the waif if she were informed of the truth, was much troubled to know what to do.

Meanwhile Ned, too, was growing daily more disturbed in mind. The knowledge that this sweet little girl was not only denying herself, but bearing undeserved suspicion for his sake, roused within him the latent fire of manliness, which a long course of privation and ill-treatment had well-nigh extinguished.

"I say," he began on the fourth morning of their meeting, "does the old g—your grandmother still think you ate that pie and things?"

"Oh yes!" returned Margie rather dolefully. "I suppose she always will. Perhaps mother will be able to persuade her. I think she is coming to see me to-night. Mother knows I wouldn't do such a thing. I shouldn't think—" and the little girl's face grew very anxious as she spoke—"I shouldn't 'think' grandma would be able to make her believe I had."

"Look here," said Ned, with resolution, "I'll make a clean breast myself. I ain't going on like this—getting you in no end of a row. I'll come and tell her myself."

"Tell grandma you got into her house and—and 'stole?'" queried Margerie, half incredulously.

"Yes. I'll chance it. If she walks me off to the lock-up—well, I reckon I can stand that. But I'm bothered if I can stand your being jacketed for what I did."

"Oh, Ned, you 'are' brave!" cried Margerie. "It is good of you. I am so glad! Come when I'm at home, Ned; come this evening when mother is here. 'She' won't be hard on you, even if grandma is. Mother's 'lovely'—I should like you to see her. You will come, won't you?"

The boy repeated his promise, and Margerie skipped away, lighter in heart than she had been for many a day.