"Well,—and we don't—if she can't be nice."
Marigold went on buttoning her neat brown dress, and said nothing.
"I can't make you out, Marigold. I'm sure I shouldn't have thought you cared particularly about her—now she's so horridly cross."
"I don't. That's the very thing. I don't care, and I don't want her, and it doesn't seem right."
Marigold's conscience was quicker and more wide-awake than that of Narcissus; at the same time, that her independence was greater, and her sense of resentment more prompt.
"That isn't our fault. If she was different—if she was like when she first came. But when a person does nothing except grumble, grunt, all day, one can't love her. I can't and I don't. And I don't see what you want her to come for this evening."
"I don't want it. I only want to do right."
"O well, I think you can leave that to her and father. There's nothing she hates like being meddled with. I wouldn't interfere if I was you. It'll just mean burning your own fingers, and making her crosser than before."
Marigold was not easily convinced.
Something in Mrs. Plunkett's look, when she had said sharply to her husband, "All you want is to get away with the girls," had touched the feelings of one of those girls. Marigold, though very bright and active, and not demonstrative, had a tender heart. The thought had come keenly—"I shouldn't like to feel that they all wanted to get away from me." It had haunted her all day, not finding expression until now.