Poor Matty hid her face with her hands, and was ready to burst into tears.
"Oh, don't take it to heart!" cried Dick; "hair will soon grow again, you know. I wonder that your friend Miss Folly has not helped you to an elegant wig."
"She is no friend of mine!" exclaimed Matty, with vehemence. "Do you not know that it was Folly who caused the explosion? She thought, like an idiot as she is, that it would be fun to put a match to the fireworks when all our backs were turned, and make us start with surprise. It was her meddling that caused all this mischief and misery;" and again poor disfigured Matty hid her face in her hands.
"Then I hope that you'll cut her from this day forth," observed Dick.
"She has cut us," replied Matty, quickly. "Have you not heard how her flounces were all in a blaze, and how she rushed about as if mad, into a cottage and out again, till Nelly and Lubin knocked her down just in time to save her from being quite burned?"
"I have heard nothing," said Dick, raising himself on his chair, with an expression of curiosity and interest; "you know that Nelly has been my nurse, and she would hardly speak a word for fear lest she should put me into a fever."
Matty was eager to impart all her knowledge, quite regardless of Nelly's parting warning, and began to talk so fast that Dick could not help being reminded of poor Miss Folly.
"Well, you shall hear everything now. Folly was knocked down, or pulled down, as I said, and then rolled about in the mud, till you could hardly have distinguished her head from her feet, or her peacock's plume from a cow's tail. And very thankful and very much delighted she ought to have been, for, if she had been quite choked with mire, it would have been better than burning alive!"
"A painful choice," observed Dick.
"But she was not choked to death," continued Matty; "she was not hurt the least bit; and yet—would you believe it?—Miss Folly is in a most furious rage against those who saved her. She declares that she ought to have a lawsuit against Nelly and Lubin to recover the value of her clothes, and another to get them punished for knocking her into the mud; and she has promised a thousand times never to come near one of our family again."