"So do I! But I like to play with boys. I knew two boys in India; they had a screechy whiny sister, who always wanted to play with us, and then cried when she did. They had to go to school in England. I was sorry when they went."
"I'm not a screechy whiny sister," said Nan, tossing her head like a war horse. "I can do everything the same as Peter, and I can run as fast."
Then Harebell began to tell them of the pony she was going to have.
"I feel he'll be a more deep friend than you," she announced. "Because he'll belong to me, and to no one else."
"We have a donkey," said Nan, "who gallops faster than a horse."
"Then we can have races."
Miss Forster's entrance at this moment stopped further conversation. She greeted Harebell kindly, but in a business-like fashion, and lessons began without further delay.
Of course Harebell was woefully backward, though in reading and writing she was as good as the other two children. But though backward, she was intelligent, and interested in everything that she was told. In the middle of lessons, she suddenly looked up at the governess with her bright eyes.
"I suppose you know all about everything?" she said.
"Not by any means. I only know so much more than you do, that it is my business to teach you."