Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. II, 1855.djvu/244

 Review. Without lifting his head, he said, "If you don't like Sholto to be so long absent from you, Edith, I hope you will let me go down to Milton, and give what assistance I can."

"Oh, thank you," said Edith, "I dare say old Mr. Bell will do everything he can, and more help may not be needed. Only one does not look for much savoir-faire from a resident Fellow. Dear, darling Margaret! won't it be nice to have her here, again? You were both great allies, years ago."

"Were we?" asked he indifferently, with an appearance of being interested in a passage in the Review.

"Well, perhaps not—I forget. I was so full of Sholto. But doesn't it fall out well, that if my uncle was to die, it should be just now, when we are come home, and settled in the old house, and quite ready to receive Margaret? Poor thing! what a change it will be to her from Milton! I'll have new chintz for her bedroom, and make it look new and bright, and cheer her up a little."

In the same spirit of kindness, Mrs. Shaw journeyed to Milton, occasionally dreading the first meeting, and wondering how it would be got over; but more frequently planning how soon she could get Margaret away from "that horrid place," and back into the pleasant comforts of Harley Street.

"Oh dear!" she said to her maid; "look at those chimneys! My poor sister Hale! I don't think I could have rested at Naples, if I had known what it was! I must have come and fetched her and Margaret away." And to herself she acknowledged, that she had always thought her brother-in-law