“Did you get their parents’ permission?” he demanded.
“No, of course I never should.”
“Then what right had you to meddle with the children?”
“They were quite horrid. My hands! They’ll never recover,” said Dora, spreading out her fingers.
“Very likely; but the children were not your slaves. You have a perfect right to forbid them to enter your school except on certain conditions, but not to tyrannise over them when there. You have done more harm than you will undo in a hurry.”
“I am afraid so,” murmured Mary.
Dora had a temper, and answered angrily, “Well, I’m sure I did it for the best.”
“I don’t approve of opinionative young ladies,” said Edmund, who was really from old habit quite like an elder brother.
“Oh, Dora,” sighed Mary, “don’t!”
Dora felt impelled to argue the matter out on the spot, but something in Mary’s look withheld her. She went away, stepping high and feeling stately and proud; but when she had walked up and down her own room a few times, her better sense began to revive, and she saw that she had acted in anger and self-will quite as much as from a sense of propriety, and she threw herself on her bed and shed some bitter tears.