"Tell me what they are."
"Why, for one thing, I've just got to the middle of Ivanhoe, where Rowena is shut up in Front de Bœuf's castle, and I want to see how she escapes. I'd much rather stay and read than go racing round the garden playing at 'I spy!'"
"But I thought you liked Effie and May and the Fergusson boys."
"I hate boys!" declared Sylvia dramatically. "At least, not Cousin Cuthbert and Ronald Hampson, but boys like the Fergusson boys. They do nothing but tear about and play tricks on one. They're perfectly hateful! I didn't enjoy my last party there one scrap. They tease me most dreadfully every time I meet them."
"What about?"
"They call me 'The Tragic Muse', because they got hold of one of my pieces of poetry. They made the most dreadful fun of it. And it wasn't tragic at all. It was about the Waltons' baby, and its blue eyes and curls and dimples. I did put dimples, though they read it out pimples! I don't believe they know what tragic means, or a muse either, and I do, because I learnt them in Greek history last month. Mrs. Walton liked the poetry though. She said I must copy it into her album and sign my name to it, and she thought I might be a poetess when I grew up, and she expected it was that which kept me so thin, and had you tried giving me cod-liver oil, because she was sure it would do me good. You're not going to, are you? I took some once at Aunt Louisa's, and it was the most disgusting stuff."
"I don't think you need any more medicine just at present, so we will spare you the cod-liver oil," said Mrs. Lindsay, smiling. "Perhaps Roy and Donald would have forgotten about the poem by this afternoon."
"No, they wouldn't. They never forgot anything if it's possible to tease. I'd far rather they didn't come. I don't want the Waltons either, or the Carsons. It's so nice and quiet in here, and Miss Holt's out, and it's such a wet day that there won't be any callers, and I can have tea with you in the drawing-room, and Father said perhaps he would be back from the office by half-past five, and he promised the next time he was home early that he'd go through my museum and help me to label all the shells, and that would be far nicer than a party."
"I thought you enjoyed playing with other children, dear," said Mrs. Lindsay rather gravely.
"I don't think I do," replied Sylvia. "It's so hard to make them play properly. They never can imagine things. When I tell the Waltons there's a witch in the cupboard, they look inside and say there isn't anybody there. They can't understand that you can pretend things until they seem quite real, and yet it's only pretending. When I told Beatrice and Nora Jackson that I knew a dragon lived in their coal house, they went and told their governess, and she said she was afraid I was not a truthful child!"