ought in the afternoon's milking.
There it was, still frothing and bubbling in three great bowls, and
taking up the first of them in my little thin arms--goodness knows
how--I made straight for my mother's room.

But hardly had I climbed half-way up the stairs, puffing and panting
under my burden, when I met Nessy MacLeod coming down, and she fell on
me with her usual reproaches.

"Mary O'Neill, you wilful, underhand little vixen, whatever are you
doing with the milk?"

Being in no mood for explanations I tried to push past, but Nessy
prevented me.

"No, indeed, you shan't go a step further. What will your Aunt Bridget
say? Take the milk back, miss, this very minute."

Nessy's loud protest brought Betsy Beauty out of the dining-room, and in
a moment my cousin, looking more than ever like a painted doll in her
white muslin dress with a large blue bow in her yellow hair, had run
upstairs to assist her step-sister.

I was now between the two, the one above and the other below, and they
laid hold of my bowl to take it from me. They tugged and I resisted and
there was a struggle in which the milk was in danger of being spilled.

"She's a stubborn little thing and she ought to be whipped," cried
Nessy.

"She's stealing my milk, and I'll tell mamma," said Betsy.

"Tell her then," I cried, and in a burst of anger at finding myself
unable to recover control of my bowl I swept it round and flung its
contents over my cousin's head, thereby drenching her with the frothing
milk and making the staircase to run like a river of whitewash.

Of course there was a fearful clamour. Betsy Beauty shrieked and Nessy
bellowed, whereupon Aunt Bridget came racing from her parlour, while my
mother, white and trembling, halted to the door of her room.

"Mally, Mally, what have you done?" cried my mother, but Aunt Bridget
found no need of questions. After running upstairs to her dripping
daughter, wiping her down with a handkerchief, calling her "my poor
darling," and saying, "Didn't I tell you to have nothing more to do with
that little vixen?" she fell on my mother with bitter upbraidings.

"Isabel, I hope you see now what your minx of a child is--the little
spiteful fury!"

By this time I had dropped my empty bowl on the stairs and taken refuge
behind my mother's gown, but I heard her timid voice trying to excuse
me, and saying something about my cousin and a childish quarrel.

"Childish quarrel, indeed!" cried my Aunt; "there's