if I
hadn't," she added with a little laugh, "for Margaret, I found, was
expected to be shy. I suppose, as poor Mrs. Murray is so dreadfully deaf,
it is easier to pass myself off as you than it might otherwise have been,
but certainly if I have made any glaring mistakes she has never noticed
them, and if I really had been you my task could not have been simpler.
Of course, the first evening she asked me a great many questions about
Mr. Anstruther and your home, and your lessons, and your governess, and
why the doctor had said you were to go away, and so on, and I answered
them all in first-class style, for I have everything you had told me
fresh in my mind. Oh, but what do you think! Our plans might have been
wrecked at the outset by something neither of us had foreseen. That
evening, just as we were going to bed, Mrs. Murray said to me in the
quiet, low tone in which she always speaks, and which it makes it
dreadfully difficult to hear what she says, that the first thing next
morning I must write to my grandfather, and tell him of my safe arrival.
I was dismayed, if you like, for I had no notion what your handwriting
was like, or any hope of copying it if I knew, but I kept my countenance,
and gave no sign of dismay. And the next morning at breakfast, while
cutting a piece of bread in half, the knife slipped and I cut the three
middle fingers of my right hand so badly that each of them had to be
wrapped up in bandages. So you see that to hold a pen was impossible, and
Mrs. Murray wrote instead of me to announce my safe arrival here."

"Oh, Eleanor!" Margaret exclaimed, "and you cut yourself on purpose."

"Of course, it was the only thing to be done; and I say I did it so well
that I haven't been able to write yet. It was rather nice and clever of
me wasn't it?"

"It was very clever," Margaret said, in a grave voice.

Three days ago, when they had laid this plot together, she might have
been able to add that this final little touch of Eleanor's was nice, too;
but somehow she could not now bring herself to utter the word. Eleanor,
however, never noticed the omission, but in the vivacious tone in which
she had spoken throughout, went on to give a further account of all that
had happened to her since she had left Margaret at the station three days
since. That she was completely happy could not be doubted. Every word she
uttered showed that she was radiantly content with her new existence, and
was not troubled by as muc