“Nor was it,” Margery answered, “but Miss Ferguson has been here and insists upon having it at twelve, and she was so overbearing, and found so much fault, and made me feel so keenly that I was only her dressmaker, that I am a little upset, even though I know she is not worth a moment’s disquietude.” “Poor Margery! It is to the caprices of such people as she that you are subjected because you are poor,” Mrs. La Rue said, caressing the golden head bent so low over Anna’s navy-blue, on the sleeve of which a great tear came near falling. “You ought to be rich, like Miss Hetherton. You would be happier in her place, would you not, my child?” “No, mother,” and Margery’s beautiful blue eyes looked frankly up into her mother’s face. “I should like money, of course, but I am very happy as I am except when people like Anna insult me and try to make me feel the immeasurable distance there is between themselves and a dressmaker. I like my profession, for it is as much one as that of the artist or musician, and if I were rich as Queenie I do believe I should still make dresses for the love of it. So, mother mine, don’t bother about me. I am very happy—happier far, just now, than Queenie, who, though she may have riches in abundance, has no mother to love her, and care for her, and pet her, as I have.” “Oh, Margery, child, you do love me, then you are glad I am your mother, unlike you as I am?” Mrs. La Rue cried in a voice which was like a sob of pain, and made Margery look wonderingly at her, as she said: “Why, mother, how strangely you act this morning. Of course I am glad you are my mother—the dearest and kindest a girl ever had. I cannot remember the time when you would not and did not sacrifice everything for me, and why should I not love you?” “You should, you ought,” Mrs. La Rue replied, “only you are so different from me that sometimes when I think how refined and lady-like you are, and then remember what I am—an uneducated peasant woman—I feel that I am an obstacle in your way, and that you must feel it, too, and wish you were some one else—somebody like Miss Hetherton—but you don’t, Margery, you don’t.” “Of course I don’t,” Margery answered, laughingly, “for if I were Miss Hetherton, don’t you see, Anna would be my cousin, and that would be worse than a hundred peasant women; so, little mother, don’t distress yourself or bother me any more, for my Lady Anna must have her dress by twelve, and it is nearly eleven now.” Taking the girl’s lovely face between her hands Mrs. La Rue kissed it fondly, and then left the room, while Margery wondered what had happened to excite her so. Such moods, or states of mind, in her mother were not unusual, and since coming to Merrivale they had been more frequent than ever, so Margery was accustomed to them, and ascribed them to a naturally morbid temperament, combined with a low, nervous state of health.