"Lots."
"What?"
"Oh, stepmothers are always mean to you and abuse you."
"How do you know? You haven't got any."
"No; but I knew a girl that had." Isabel took advantage of Phebe's interest in the subject, to slip the half-eaten turnip into her pocket.
"What happened?" Phebe demanded.
"Oh, everything. The stepmother used to take tucks in her dresses, and whip her, and send her to bed, and even when there was company. And her own mother used to stand by the bed and say,—
'How is my baby and how is my fawn?
Once more will I come, and then vanish at dawn.'"
Phebe turned around sharply.
"What a fib! That's in a book of fairy stories, and you said you knew the girl, Isabel St. John."