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

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ATALANTA IN THE SOUTH
181

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."