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The girl who finds her is pretty, Margaret supposes. Short and slender, as if she was made to look ever-young and innocent. Well, that makes One!
Margaret has been crying for too long. She ought cheer herself up – singing has failed today, but there must be Some Thing which can be done about Despard, her Betrayer!
“Can I do aught to soften thy sorrow? This apple?”
Bother, the girl sits down with her as well?
“No!” Margaret frowns like a pitiful monkey as she tosses the apple back. The girl could be mad. She is concerned for a madwoman. “Tell me, are you mad?”
“I? No! That is, I think not.”
She thinks not! Thinking not is what got Margaret into this mess in the first place! “That’s well! Then you don’t love Sir Despard Murgatroyd? All mad girls love him. I love him. I’m poor Mad Margaret – Daft Meg – Poor Peg!”
“Thou lovest the bad Baronet of Ruddigore? Oh, horrible – too horrible!”
Pity she is horrified; the color is good for her.
Hold, pity?
“You pity me? Then be my mother! The squirrel had a mother, but she drank and the squirrel fled! Hush! They sing a brave song in our parts – it runs somewhat thus,” Meg hisses, “The cat and the dog and the little puppee Sat down in a – down in a – in a – oh, I forget what they sat down in, but so the song goes! Listen – I’ve come to pinch her!”
It is a warning and the girl takes it. “Mercy, whom?”
“You mean ‘who’.” Grammar lessons ought be more common. Her honeyed words betray ill-chosen principles and utterly proper approaches to government and deportment.
“Nay! it is the accusative after the verb.” The girl smiles and reaches towards a book in her basket.
“True.” Meggie has forgotten her own old Favorite of the grammar rules. She leans closer to the girl. To scare or to mimick the gossipers she watches dance in the square day in and out, she knows not. “I have come to pinch… Rose Maybud!”
“Rose Maybud?” The girl whispers. Shock, it must be. All love Rose Maybud. Her Betrayer loves Rose Maybud.
Her Betrayer!
“Aye! I love him – he loved me once. But that’s all gone, fisht! He gave me an Italian glance – thus—” Peg mimics her Betrayer’s pretty sensual glare that so captivated her “—and made me his. He will give her an Italian glance, and make her his. But it shall not be, for I’ll stamp on her – stamp on her – stamp on her!”
She throws an arm wide and the girl looks at her with such pity Margaret can only think of how odd it feels. Nobody pities Mag.
“Did you ever kill anybody? No? Why not? Listen – I killed a fly this morning! It buzzed, and I wouldn’t have it. So it died – pop! So shall she!”
The girl gasps. It is not pity. Margaret likes it not well either. “But, behold! I am Rose Maybud, and I would fain not die ‘pop’,” says she.
“You are Rose Maybud?”
Sweet pigs that sing at night!
“Yes, sweet Rose Maybud!” Rose, as she must then be, blushes.
Oh, and horrible things above, she is quite pretty in color when she does.
“Strange!” Margaret muses. “They told me she was beautiful! And he loves you! No, no! If I thought that, I would treat you as the auctioneer and land-agent treated the lady-bird – I would rend you asunder!”
Rose does not understand compliments. Or, then, Mad Mag is uncommonly terribly-suited to give them. “Nay, be pacified,” Rose pleads, “for behold I am pledged to another, and lo, we are to be wedded this very day!”
Good! her Betrayer deserves not this pretty girl kind to a madwoman.
Margaret likes her better pretty and free like Ruthven who flew the coup.