“That’s all very fine in a fairy-tale, Virginia, and it is an extremely good one for a little girl like you to make up out of her own head.  But you know in real life it is different.”  Margaret Elizabeth gazed pensively into the fire.

Virginia, prone upon the hearth-rug, was disposed to argue what she did not understand.  “How different?”

“Well, in a fairy-tale you can have things as you want them, but in real life you get tangled up in what other people want, and with duty and common sense; and when you determine to follow your—­” Margaret Elizabeth was going to say “heart,” but changed to “intuitions,” “you are left high and dry on a desert island.”

Virginia was to be excused if she failed to make head or tail of this.  “I wish the Candy Man would come back,” she remarked irrelevantly.  “He was much nicer than Tim.  He liked fairy-tales.  He said he was coming some time.”

“Oh, did he?” said Miss Bentley.

The reference to a desert island, and a disposition to quarrel with fairy-tales, go to show that while she was decidedly more like herself than in the last chapter, her recovery was not yet complete.  In fact Margaret Elizabeth was suffering from the irritability that so often accompanies convalescence.  Cantankerousness was Uncle Bob’s word for it, and he defended it with all the eloquence of which he was master, his finger on the page in the dictionary where it was to be found in good and regular standing.

It really did not matter what you called it; the point was, that in an argument with her aunt, Margaret Elizabeth had gone further than she intended; had said what had better have been left unsaid.  This she confessed to Dr. Prue.

“Let me see your tongue,” commanded that professional lady, regarding her searchingly.

Margaret Elizabeth displayed the unruly member, laughing as she did so.

“What did you say to Mrs. Pennington?”

“We were speaking,” Margaret Elizabeth answered meekly, “of gratitude, and Aunt Eleanor said, as you are always hearing people say, that there is little or none of it in the world.  You see, in some matter which came up in the Colonial Dames, Nancy Lane sided against her.  ’And after all I’ve done for her!’ cried Aunt Eleanor.  I said I thought gratitude was an overrated virtue anyway, and that to expect a person to vote your way because you had been good to her, was a kind of graft.”

“Humph!” said Dr. Prue.

“I know it was a dreadful, dreadful thing to say.”  Tears were in Margaret Elizabeth’s eyes.  “When she has been loveliness itself to me.  There it is, you see.  I have thought about it, and thought about it, until I’m all mixed up.”

“What did your aunt say?”

“She was very dignified.  She had not expected to hear such a thing from me.  Then she walked away.”

“I hope you asked her pardon.”

“I had no chance.  She has gone to Chicago—­was on her way to the station then.  I will, of course.”