CHAPTER III

On the days that followed, the miracle came to be accepted by all
Weston, which was much excited for a day or two over this honor done a
favorite daughter, and by all the Pagets,--except Margaret. Margaret
went through the hours in her old, quiet manner, a little more tender
and gentle perhaps than she had been; but her heart never beat
normally, and she lay awake late at night, and early in the morning,
thinking, thinking, thinking. She tried to realize that it was in her
honor that a farewell tea was planned at the club, it was for her that
her fellow-teachers were planning a good-bye luncheon; it was really
she--Margaret Paget--whose voice said at the telephone a dozen times a
day, "On the fourteenth.--Oh, do I? I don't feel calm! Can't you try
to come in--I do want to see you before I go!" She dutifully repeated
Bruce's careful directions; she was to give her check to an
expressman, and her suitcase to a red-cap; the expressman would
probably charge fifty cents, the red-cap was to have no more than
fifteen. And she was to tell the latter to put her into a taxicab.

"I'll remember," Margaret assured him gratefully, but with a sense of
unreality pressing almost painfully upon her.--One of a million
ordinary school teachers, in a million little towns--and this marvel
had befallen her!

The night of the Pagets' Christmas play came, a night full of laughter
and triumph; and marked for Margaret by the little parting gifts that
were slipped into her hands, and by the warm good wishes that were
murmured, not always steadily, by this old friend and that. When the
time came to distribute plates and paper napkins, and great saucers of