haven't
the faintest idea what the name was. It was a gentleman to whom I had
letters from my father, who had some business with him. He was
exceedingly kind to me, and his house was charming; and he had such a
pretty little daughter,'--hear that, Meg!--'and I have remembered the
table-girl ever since. It cannot have been you; for I have heard you
say you were always away at school, except in the summer; and yet I am
so sure of your face and figure and hair and every thing about you,
only you have lost a strong brogue you had then. Not you, of course,
but the person I saw. I have been so foolishly sure about it, and
supposed some one had become interested in you, as I was at the
time,'--here he blushed again,--'and had educated you where you met
Miss Thornton, and that you had a vast deal of tact, and were deluding
her and her friends. I have treated you dreadfully, and Miss Alice
too; and only the other night I had the most supreme contempt for you,
because you were apparently so innocent concerning young women being
raised above their station, and all that sort of thing. It would come
over me once in a while that you could not be carrying this all out,
and I didn't believe in my previous idea at all; and yet the face is
the same. I am as much in the dark as ever,' said the poor man
solemnly.

"All this time I was pinching my fingers under the table to keep from
laughing; but when he stopped, looking to me for a solution of all his
troubles, with that ridiculously perplexed face, and I saw uncle Rob's
and aunt Kitty's faces, it _would_ come, and I fairly shrieked, and
rushed from the table into the library, and threw myself into an
easy-chair; and I truly never laughed so in my life. I believe I had
hysterics at last, and they came in in dismay. _Don't_ you know what
it was, Margaret? _Don't_ you remember the day, last Easter vacation,
when Ann had gone down to Salem with her sister, and papa had four
strange gentlemen to dine with him, and I put on one of Ann's aprons,
and waited on the table for fun? I think it was idiotic in me not to
have recognized Mr. Bruce before. Only think how much it would have
saved us! He was the handsome young Englishman who went to the
drawing-room with you and mamma, instead of the library, and then went
away early. You remember all about him now, don't you? I went back to
the dining-room, and told the whole story from beginning to end, and
if we didn't enjoy ourselves over it! Poor