‘I’m sure every one is cross enough to me,’ returned Alfred.
‘Not Mother,’ said Ellen. ‘She couldn’t help it.’
‘She won’t send Harold out again, though; I’m sure I’d have gone for him.’
‘You don’t know what the rain was,’ said Ellen.
‘Well, he should have minded; but you’re all against me.’
‘You’ll be sorry by-and-by, Alfred; this isn’t like the way you talk sometimes.’
‘Some one else had need to be sorry, not me.’
Perhaps, in the midst of his captious state, Alfred was somewhat pacified by hearing sounds below that made him certain that Harold was not escaping without some strong words from his mother.
They were not properly taken. Harold was in no mood of repentance, and the consciousness that he had been behaving most unkindly, only made him more rough and self-justifying.
‘I can’t help it! I can’t be a slave to run about everywhere, and remember everything—pony losing her shoe, and nigh tumbling down with me, and Ross at the post so cross for nothing!’