“Well, so we do,” replied Nancy, “very often. We burnt her only last week.”
“She was Joan of Arc,” explained Pennie. “Only make-believe, you know. Not real flames.”
Ethelwyn stared. “What odd games you play!” she said. “I never heard of them. But I know one thing: if she were mine I’d soon put her into real flames.”
The rest of the day went on in much the same way, and the children found it more and more difficult to amuse their guest. It was astonishing to find how very soon she tired of any game. “What shall we do now?” was her constant cry; and it grew so tiresome that Nancy and the boys at last went off to play together, and left her entirely to Pennie. And this arrangement grew to be a settled thing, for it really was almost impossible to play the usual games with Ethelwyn; there was no sort of check on her overbearing ways, because “she was a visitor,” and must do as she liked. Now, she was a very poor hand at “making up,” and did not understand “Shipwrecks” or “Desert Islands” in the least; but this would not have mattered if she had been willing to learn. Joined, however, to complete ignorance on those subjects, she had a large amount of conceit, and seemed to think she could do everything better than anyone else. For instance, if they were going to play “Shipwrecks”—“I’ll be captain,” she would exclaim at once. This had always been Ambrose’s part, and he rather prided himself on his knowledge of nautical affairs, gathered from a wide acquaintance with Captain Marryat’s stories. He gave it up politely to Ethelwyn, however, and the game began. But in two minutes she would say: “I’m tired of being captain; I’d rather be Indian savages.” Indian savages was being performed with great spirit by Nancy, but the change was made, and the game went on, until Ethelwyn cast an envious eye upon Dickie, who, with a small pail and broom, was earnestly scrubbing at the carpet, under the impression that she was a cabin-boy washing the deck of a ship. “I should like to be cabin-boy,” said Ethelwyn.
But here the limit of endurance was reached, for Dickie grasped her little properties tightly and refused to give up office.
“Me will be cabin-boy,” was all she said when Pennie tried to persuade her.
“You see she’s so little,” said the latter apologetically to Ethelwyn, “there’s no other part she can take, and she likes the pail and broom so.”
“Oh, very well,” said the latter carelessly, “then I don’t care to play any more. It’s a very stupid game, and only fit for boys.”
Things did not go on pleasantly at Easney just now, and the longer Ethelwyn stayed the more frequent became the quarrels; she had certainly brought strife and confusion with her, and by degrees there came to be a sort of division amongst the children. Pennie and Ethelwyn walked apart, and looked on with dignified superiority, while the others played the old games with rather more noise than usual. Pennie tried to think she liked this, but sometimes she would look wistfully after her merry brothers and sisters and feel half inclined to join them; the next minute, however, when Ethelwyn tossed her head and said, “How vulgar!” she was quite ashamed of her wish.
She wondered now how it was that she had been able to play with the boys so long without disagreement before Ethelwyn came. Of course these quarrels were all their fault, for in Pennie’s eyes Ethelwyn could do no wrong; if sometimes it was impossible to help seeing that she was greedy and selfish, and even told fibs, Pennie excused it in her own mind—indeed, these faults did not seem to her half so bad in Ethelwyn as in other people, and by degrees she thought much more lightly of them than she had ever done before.