"No," I answered.
"You know I shall never come into your house again while that baby is there," she declared in an odd, quiet sort of way. "I hate that baby, and he that hates is just like a murderer."
She said it with a certain relish, as if she were proud of it. I begin to suspect that there may be a good deal of the theatrical mixed with her abnormal feeling.
"Kathie," I said, "you may be as silly as you like, but you can't make me believe anything so absurd as that you hate Thomasine. As for being a murderer in your heart, you wouldn't hurt a fly."
She looked at me queerly. I half thought there was a little disappointment in her first glance; then a strange expression as if she unconsciously took herself for audience, since I would not serve, and went on with her play of abnormal wickedness.
"You don't know how wicked I am," she responded. "I am a murderer in my heart."
A strangely intense look came into her eyes, as if a realization of what she was saying took hold of her, and as if she became really frightened by her own assumption. She clutched my arm with a grasp which must have been at least half genuine.
"Oh, Miss Ruth," she said. "I don't know what I shall do. I know I am lost!"
I wanted to shake the child, so completely for the moment did I feel that a lot of her emotion was make-believe, even if unconscious; but on the other hand she was actually beginning to turn pale and tremble with the nervous excitement she had raised by her fear or her theatricals.