“You are very poetic,” said Gertrude; “but I understand what you mean, and shall not forget it.”
“You ungrateful wretch,” exclaimed Agatha, turning upon her so suddenly and imperiously that she involuntarily shrank aside: “how often, when you have tried to be insolent and false with me, have I not driven away your bad angel—by tickling you? Had you a friend in the college, except half-a-dozen toadies, until I came? And now, because I have sometimes, for your own good, shown you your faults, you bear malice against me, and say that you don’t care whether we part friends or not!”
“I didn’t say so.”
“Oh, Gertrude, you know you did,” said Jane.
“You seem to think that I have no conscience,” said Gertrude querulously.
“I wish you hadn’t,” said Agatha. “Look at me! I have no conscience, and see how much pleasanter I am!”
“You care for no one but yourself,” said Gertrude. “You never think that other people have feelings too. No one ever considers me.”
“Oh, I like to hear you talk,” cried Jane ironically. “You are considered a great deal more than is good for you; and the more you are considered the more you want to be considered.”
“As if,” declaimed Agatha theatrically, “increase of appetite did grow by what it fed on. Shakespeare!”
“Bother Shakespeare,” said Jane, impetuously, “—old fool that expects credit for saying things that everybody knows! But if you complain of not being considered, Gertrude, how would you like to be me, whom everybody sets down as a fool? But I am not such a fool as—”