Generally, Anna would have been ashamed to be seen in distress, and would have tried to hide it, but now she was too miserable to mind anything. She hid her face in her hands again, without answering Daisy’s question.
“Has some one been cross?” inquired Daisy at last.
Anna shook her head. Her heart ached for sympathy even from Daisy, though she could not speak to her, and she hoped she would not go away just yet.
“Have you hurt yourself?” proceeded Daisy.
Again the same sign.
“Have you done something naughty? I did something very naughty once.”
Seeing that Anna did not shake her head this time, she added, in her condescending little tone:
“If you like, I’ll come and sit beside you, and tell you all about it.”
She put her basket of eggs very carefully on the ground, and placed herself comfortably by Anna’s side.
“It was a very naughty thing I did,” she began, in a voice of some enjoyment, “worse than yours, I expect. It was a year ago, and one of our geese was sitting, and mother said she wasn’t to be meddled with nohow. And the white Cochin-china hen was sitting too, and”—Daisy paused to give full weight to the importance of the crime, and opened her eyes very wide, “and—I changed ’em! I carried the goose and put her on the hen’s nest, and she forsook it, and the hen forsook hers, and the eggs were all addled! Mother was angry! She said it wasn’t the eggs she minded so much as the disobedience. Was yours worse than that?”