"Weren't you never naughty, auntie?"
"No doubt I was sometimes. All children are. But I do not think I often forgot things that I was told to do."
Hecla left the chair tilted on one side, with a foot on a stool, and came close to Miss Storey.
"Won't you tell me, please, about when you really truly were a naughty child, auntie? Please do."
Miss Storey gazed with rather puzzled eyes into the anxious little face.
"I think you ought rather to wish to hear about when I was good," she said patiently, though that crooked chair tried her dreadfully, and she did so long to be by herself.
"But you've told me that—oh, heaps of times! And I do want to know about when you did something naughty—ever so naughty!"
"Not now. Perhaps some other day, when you have been particularly good. I don't say you have been exactly naughty to-day, but still I should like to see you trying a little harder not to forget everything you are told. Now you have to go out."
And actually—again!—Hecla was marching off, without a thought of that unfortunate chair. Again she had to be called back, and again she rammed it hastily into the wrong place, banging the back of another chair against the wall-paper, which the two aunts were always so careful to guard from unsightly marks. Of course the bang left a dent, and when at length Hecla vanished, Miss Storey sighed and closed her eyes, and murmured—
"What a child it is! And to think of—another! Impossible!"