“No, my dear; but I’ll buy a box for you after breakfast.”
“And is this really your birthday?”
“Yes. Why? Doesn’t it look like it?” triumphantly.
“I thought it was only ladies who had birthdays,” remarked this charming little guest, with a severe air; “and Mrs. Dashwood says you are not a lady.”
“Well, not by birth, my dear, though I dare say I am as well-born as she is; and, anyway, I take the pas of her in all society.”
“Whose pa?” was the sternly put question.
As Mark and Honor greeted this query with a burst of laughter, the mite looked excessively pleased with herself.
“You will soon find her quite in her best form,” muttered Mr. Brande from behind the Pioneer. Then added, in French, “She has been pretty good for a week, and that’s her very longest interval. I saw her down at the fowl-house before breakfast, Honor, with your smart white-silk parasol.”
“Mamma always talks just as you do when she is talking about me, or about anything she does not want me to know,” cried Sweet, vivaciously. “I’ve done my breakfast,” slipping off her chair, “and I’m going down to see the syce’s children. Oh, won’t I pull their hair;” and she darted away.
Sweet was possessed of a demon of unrest that morning—nothing pleased her for more than two minutes, and her indolent ayah calmly left the task of entertaining her to others. Little Miss Primrose never played games, or dressed dolls, or made shops—indeed, Sweet’s tastes were far too advanced for these tame juvenile delights; they had palled years previously. It afforded her far keener pleasure to harry her elders, and to rule her fellow-housemates with a scourge.