“I thought of course you would come over yesterday, to the play place, you know,” returned Jessie.
Adele dropped her eyes and appeared to be looking attentively at her toes. “I couldn’t,” she said presently.
“Why not?”
“She wouldn’t let me.”
“What she?”
“Aunt Betty. She’s horrid like that sometimes and is just as mean as she can be.”
“Is that because she isn’t—she isn’t just like other people?” asked Jessie hesitatingly. She could readily understand that a person who looked like Miss Hallett might have reason to be disagreeable.
Adele looked at her fixedly for a moment, then to Jessie’s great discomfiture she burst into tears. “She isn’t! She isn’t! She isn’t!” she repeated. “She is just like other people and she is dear and good and lovely. You shan’t say she is not.”
Jessie was bewildered. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean——” she began helplessly.
“It was I who was horrid,” Adele went on. “It was all my doing. I got mad and screamed and fought Angeline and wouldn’t eat my supper because I couldn’t have coffee and lots, lots, lots of sugar in it, and so Aunt Betty said I shouldn’t go to see you till she said I might. She isn’t horrid at all, and you shan’t say she is. She is perfectly beautiful.”