“It’s you who make me cry,” said Sophia, bitterly. “You make me cry and then you call me a great baby!” And sobs ran through her frame like waves one after another. She spoke so indistinctly that her mother now really had some difficulty in catching her words.
“Sophia,” said Mrs. Baines, with god-like calm, “it is not I who make you cry. It is your guilty conscience makes you cry. I have merely asked you a question, and I intend to have an answer.”
“I’ve told you.” Here Sophia checked the sobs with an immense effort.
“What have you told me?”
“I just went out.”
“I will have no trifling,” said Mrs. Baines. “What did you go out for, and without telling me? If you had told me afterwards, when I came in, of your own accord, it might have been different. But no, not a word! It is I who have to ask! Now, quick! I can’t wait any longer.”
(“I gave way over the castor-oil, my girl,” Mrs. Baines said in her own breast. “But not again! Not again!”)
“I don’t know,” Sophia murmured.
“What do you mean—you don’t know?”
The sobbing recommenced tempestuously. “I mean I don’t know. I just went out.” Her voice rose; it was noisy, but scarcely articulate. “What if I did go out?”