u like," she would really, in a strange distorted
sort of way, have been _disappointed_.

But, of course, Miss Grizzel made no such reply. Nothing less than a
miracle could have made her answer Griselda otherwise than as she did.
Like Dorcas, for an instant, she was utterly "flabbergasted," if you
know what that means. For she was really quite an old lady, you know,
and sensible as she was, things upset her much more easily than when she
was younger.

Naughty Griselda saw her uneasiness, and enjoyed it.

"Playing with a boy!" exclaimed Miss Grizzel. "A boy in my grounds, and
you, my niece, to have played with him!"

"Yes," said Griselda coolly, "and I want to play with him again."

"Griselda," said her aunt, "I am too astonished to say more at present.
Go to bed."

"Why should I go to bed? It is not my bedtime," cried Griselda, blazing
up. "What have I done to be sent to bed as if I were in disgrace?"

"Go to bed," repeated Miss Grizzel. "I will speak to you to-morrow."

"You are very unfair and unjust," said Griselda, starting up from her
chair. "That's all the good of being honest and telling everything. I
might have played with the little boy every day for a month and you
would never have known, if I hadn't told you."

She banged across the room as she spoke, and out at the door, slamming
it behind her rudely. Then upstairs like a whirlwind; but when she got
to her own room, she sat down on the floor and burst into tears, and
when Dorcas came up, nearly half an hour later, she was still in the
same place, crouched up in a little heap, sobbing bitterly.

"Oh, missie, missie," said Dorcas, "it's just what I was afraid of!"

As Griselda rushed out of the room Miss Grizzel leant back in her chair
and sighed deeply.

"Already," she said faintly. "She was never so violent before. Can one
afternoon's companionship with rudeness have already contaminated her?
Already, Tabitha--can it be so?"

"Already," said Miss Tabitha, softly shaking her head, which somehow
made her look wonderfully like an old cat, for she felt cold of an
evening and usually wore a very fine woolly shawl of a delicate grey
shade, and the borders of her cap and the ruffles round her throat and
wrists were all of fluffy, downy white--"already," she said.

"Yet," said Miss Grizzel, recovering herself a little, "it is true what
the child said. She might have deceived us. Have I been hard upon her,
Sister Tabitha?"

"Hard upon her! Sister Gr