NAUGHTINESS, AND A SEQUEL.
"She has behaved very naughtily," said Brother Copas.
"I don't understand it at all," sighed Brother Bonaday.
"Nor I."
"It's not like her, you see."
"It was a most extraordinary outburst.… Either the child has picked up some bad example at school, to copy it (and you will remember I always doubted that her sex gets any good of schooling)—"
"But," objected Brother Bonaday, "it was you who insisted on sending her."
"So I did—in self-defence. If we had not done our best the State would have done its worst, and put her into an institution where one underpaid female grapples with sixty children in a class, and talks all the time. Now we didn't want Corona to acquire the habit of talking all the time." Here Brother Copas dropped a widower's sigh. "In fact, it has hitherto been no small part of her charm that she seldom or never spoke out of her turn."
"It has been a comfort to have her company," put in Brother Bonaday, eager to say a good word for the culprit.
"She spoke out of her turn just now," said Brother Copas sternly. "Her behaviour to Nurse Turner was quite atrocious.… Now either she has picked this up at school, or—the thought occurs to me—she has been loafing around the laundry, gossiping with the like of Mrs. Royle and Mrs. Clerihew, and letting their evil communications corrupt her good manners. This seems to me the better guess, because the women in the laundry are always at feud with the nurses; it's endemic there: and 'a nasty two-faced spy' smacks, though faintly, of the wash-tub. In my hearing Mrs. Clerihew has accused Nurse Branscome of 'carrying tales.' 'A nasty two-faced spy'—the child was using those very words when we surprised her, and the Lord knows what worse before we happened on the scene."