"We don't mean to be managed; Georgie and I manage ourselves. We won't have anybody ordering us about, and if you're going to start telling us what to do, we shall get rid of you. We've got rid of six governesses already. We know how to do it."
"You see," said Georgie, putting in her word eagerly, "we're the new race, that's what Mrs. Penfold, the clergyman's wife who went away, was always saying. She said modern girls were awful, and couldn't be managed anyhow. That's Josie and me. We're awful, and we'll show you how awful we can be!"
"I don't doubt that," said Anstice, nodding her head gravely. "But the trouble is that you won't be able to turn me out. I have come to stay. I am not a governess, and this is my home, and everything in this house belongs to your father and me, and of course you go shares! You can treat me like your governesses, but you will find I can't be frightened or threatened or driven away. The only thing you could do would be to poison me or drown me or kill me in some way; but if you did that, it would of course, be found out, and you would be taken away by the police."
"Would they be hung?" asked Ruffie excitedly.
"I think most likely they'd be sent to a children's prison, a reformatory, where instead of managing themselves, they would be ruled up all day long and kept continuously at work. They would never be able to come home. Ruffie would be so lonely that he would die of a broken heart. Your father would feel the disgrace and shame of it so much that he would sell the house and the grounds and everything that was in it, and go away to foreign lands and live and die there and never come home again. DO you think that would be a happy thing for all of us?"
The little girls were much impressed, though it was difficult to tell beneath their paint and powder how they were taking it.
Anstice turned to Josie politely.
"Brother Rattleskunk, will you speak now?"
For a moment Josie hesitated.
"If you let us alone, and let us do what we like, and just do things in the house without interfering, we might be friends."