FullReads

“Look here, darling,” said I, “when I come and play with you, I always play dolls as you like, because the dolls’ house is yours; I wish you would play my game to-day, as the Dutch fair is mine.”

Maud Mary flounced to her feet, and bridled with her wavy head, and said she was sure she did not want to play if I didn’t like her way of playing; and as to my Dutch fair, her papa could buy her one any day for her very own.

I was nettled, for Maud Mary was a little apt to flourish Mr. Ibbetson’s money in my face; but if her father was rich, my godmother was a lady of rank, and I said that “my godmother, Lady Elizabeth, said it was very vulgar to flounce and toss one’s head if one was put out.”

Maud Mary crimsoned, and, exclaiming that she did not care what Lady Elizabeth or Lady Anybody Else said, she whisked over three shops with the ends of her sash, and kicked the wax off Josephine Esmeralda’s nose with the heel of her Balmoral boot.

I don’t like confessing it, but I did push Maud Mary, and Maud Mary slapped me.

And when we both looked up, my godmother was standing before us, with her gold spectacles on her nose.

* * * * *

Lady Elizabeth was very kind, and even then I knew that she was very right.

When she said, “I have asked your friend for a week, and for that week, my dear, she is your guest, and you must try to please, and make the best of it,” I not only did not dispute it; I felt a spirit of self-suppression and hospitable pride awake within me to do as she had said.

I think the hardest part of it was that, whatever I did and whatever I gave up, Maud Mary recognized no effort on my part. What she got she took as her due, and what she did not get she grumbled about.

I sometimes think that it was partly because, in all that long week, she never ceased grumbling, that I did; I hope for life.

Only once I said, “O godmamma! how glad I shall be when I am alone with Joseph again!” And with sudden remorse, I added, “But I beg your pardon, that’s grumbling; and you have been so kind!”

Lady Elizabeth took off her eye-glasses, and held out her hands for mine.

“Is it grumbling, little woman?” she said. “Well, I’m not sure.”

“I’m not sure,” I said, smiling; “for you know I only said I should be so glad to be alone with Joseph, and to try to be good to him; for he is a very kind boy, and if he is a little awkward with the dolls, I mean to make the best of it. One can’t have everything,” I added, laughing.

Lady Elizabeth drew my head towards her, and stroked and kissed it.

“GOD bless you, child,” she said. “You have inherited your father’s smile.”

* * * * *

“But, I say, Selina,” whispered Joseph, when I went to look at his fortress in the bay-window. “Do you suppose it’s because he’s dead that she cried behind her spectacles when she said you had got his smile?”