Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/187

 me, Margaret, which do you like the best? You have n't any business to let them both go on loving you so,—it's really immoral."

Margaret smiled a little absently, and began to braid the long hair on the skye's forehead.

"Don't do that; he can't bear the light in his eyes," said Mrs. Harden.

Margaret put the dog down, and took up a skein of wool to wind.

"You are spoiling my best iced worsted; don't wind it so tight. I never saw such a girl; you are really nervous, I believe, and want to keep your hands busy at something, no matter how disastrous the results may be."

Margaret threw the skein back into the work-basket, and going to the piano played a few bars of a waltz. It was the music to which she had danced with Robert Feuardent on the day of the fête. As soon as she recognized it, she struck a few chords of a new galop, and then closed the instrument, and went and looked at herself in the glass; she unclasped her necklace, and twisted it twice about her arm.

"Does n't that make a pretty bracelet, Sara?"

"Oh, yes, of course," answered that lady pettishly, "and the hand is still prettier. I suppose that 's what you want me to say. Which of them shall you bestow it on? I must know."