He tried to look very angry, but she knew all about his face, and his tone, and said nonchalantly, "Oh, you can go over to the other house and get something to eat."
"Well, we'll see, little Miss Madam. You'll be gravely mistook!"
So they jested and pretended to bicker. Then grandad set up Norah with a pony and a sort of jaunting car, that would only hold two. For Daffodil could no longer keep her seat in the old fashion, neither would her arms reach around grandad.
Sometimes Norah took out Barbe and the little boy. For Daffodil went to school quite regularly about eight months of the year. The remaining time most of the children were needed to help at home.
Any other child would have been spoiled with the favoritism at school. The older ones helped her at her lessons, and in those days there were no easy kindergarten methods. They gave her tidbits of their luncheons, they piled her little basket with fruit, although she insisted there was so much at home. They brought her some strange flower they had found, they hovered about her as if there was some impelling sweetness, some charm. She had a way of dispensing her regard impartially, but with so tender a grace that no one was hurt.
"I just wish we could go to the same school," Ned Langdale said in one of the Sunday rambles. He was always on the lookout for Norah and her.
"But—the big boys go there."
"Yes. Oh, you wouldn't like it a bit. Beside, you couldn't. And the lessons are just awful. And the thrashings——"
"Don't. I can't hear about that;" shaking her pretty golden head.
"No. Girls oughtn't. But they say it's good for children——"