is afternoon to buy things for Lilac Lane. That
delightful shopping must be postponed; that hope was put further in the
distance. She sat moodily still. She ceased to care when the patching
got done.

"Losing time," said Mrs. Candy at length, getting up and putting by her
own basket. "The bell will ring in a few minutes, Matilda; and I shall
leave you here to do your work at your leisure."

The child looked at her and looked down again, with what slight air of
her little head it is impossible to describe, though it undoubtedly and
unmistakably signified her disapproval. It was Matilda's habitual
gesture, but resented by Mrs. Candy. She stepped up to her and gave the
side of her head a smart stroke with the palm of her hand.

"You are not to answer me by gestures, you know I told you," she
exclaimed. And she and Clarissa quitting the room, the door was locked
on the outside.

Matilda's condition at first was one of simple bewilderment. The
indignity, the injury, the wrong, were so unwonted and so
unintelligible, that the child felt as if she were in a dream. What did
it mean? and was it real? The locked door was a hard fact, that
constantly asserted itself; perhaps so did Matilda's want of dinner;
the linen patches on the floor were another tangible fact. And as
Matilda came to realise that she was alone and could indulge herself,
at last a flood of bitter tears came to wash, they could not wash away,
her hurt feeling and her despair. Every bond was broken, to Matilda's
thinking, between her and her aunt; all friendship was gone that had
been from one to the other; and she was in the power of one who would
use it. That was the hardest to realise; for if Matilda had been in her
mother's power once, it had also been power never exercised. The child
had been always practically her own mistress. Was that ended? Was Mrs.
Candy her mistress now? her freedom gone? and was there no escape? It
made Matilda almost wild to think these thoughts, wild and frightened
together; and with all that, very angry. Not passionately, which was
not her nature, but with a deep sense of displeasure and dislike. The
patch and the linen to be patched lay untouched on the floor, it is
need less to say, when Mrs. Candy came up from dinner.

Mrs. Candy came up alone. She surveyed the state of things in silence.
Matilda had been crying, she saw. She left her time to recover from
that and take up her work. But Matilda sat despairing and careless,