Oh Mary!"
"My poor dear Caroline! But you say that you were told you ought to
do it?"
"Well, yes. Dear granny wished it; but I think that was rather with
a view to Joe's popularity, and we haven't any patients to think of
now. I should think the less arrant gossip the children heard, the
better."
"But is it well to let them despise everybody?"
"Then the less they see of them, the better!"
"For shame, Carey!"
"Well, Mary, I dare say I am naughty. I do feel naughtier now than
ever I did in my life; but I can't help it! It just makes me mad to
be worried or tied down," and she pushed back her hair so that her
unfortunate cap was only withheld from tumbling entirely off by the
pin that held it.
"Oh, that wretched cap!" she cried, jumping up, petulantly, and going
to the glass to set it to rights, but with so hasty a hand that the
pin became entangled in her hair, and it needed Mary's quiet hand to
set it to rights; "it's just an emblem of all the rest of it; I
wouldn't wear it another day, but that I'm afraid of Ellen and
Robert, and it perfectly drives me wild. And I know Joe couldn't
have borne to see me in it." At the Irishism of which she burst out
laughing, and laughed herself into the tears that had never come when
they were expected of her.
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