"Well, then," said Rose, "it's lucky you don't have to go there."
"Yes, isn't it?" Gwen said, cheerfully. "I could if I wanted to. Mamma will go wherever I wish, that is if I just act horrid enough."
"Why, what do you mean?" Polly asked, and Gwen laughed.
"You're funny girls," she said. "Don't either of you know that the way to get your own way is to scream and be just as horrid as you can until your mamma 'gives in?'"
"I'd not care to act like that," Princess Polly said, and Rose said: "Neither would I."
"Well, I want my own way, all the time and everywhere, and that's the way I get it," declared Gwen, and she danced off down the avenue, humming as cheerfully as if she had told of doing pleasant things.
"Isn't it queer'?" Rose said. "Gwen tells of being disagreeable, as if she felt proud of it."
"Mrs. Harcourt does the same thing," said Primrose Polly. "She's always telling of horrid pranks, and rude things that Gwen says, and she tells them as if she thought Gwen very smart to act so. It isn't odd that Gwen behaves so badly, for she likes to act just perfectly horrid. She says so, and if she thinks her mamma likes it, what is there to make her stop?"
"And Uncle John says, oh, I'd not tell exactly what he says, but he said only yesterday that he could not understand how any woman could let her little daughter grow up like a weed. He said Gwen was pretty to look at, but as unpleasant as a nettlebush. I'd not like anyone to say that of me," Rose said.
"Well, no one ever would say that about you," Polly said lovingly.