“Well, that is very bad!” said Margaret; “but I suppose she was a very little one.”
“No, a quick clever one, who knew much better, about nine years old. She used to be always at home in the week, dragging about a great baby; and we managed that her mother should afford to stay at home and send her to school. It seemed such a pity her cleverness should be wasted.”
The doctor smiled. “Ah! depend upon it, the tyrant-baby was the best disciplinarian.”
Meta looked extremely puzzled.
“Papa means,” said Margaret, “that if she was inclined to be conceited, the being teased at home might do her more good than being brought forward at school.”
“I have done everything wrong, it seems,” said Meta, with a shade of what the French call depit. “I thought it must be right and good—but it has only done mischief; and now papa says they are an ungrateful set, and that, if it vexes me, I had better have no more to do with them!”
“It does not vex you so much as that, I hope,” said Margaret.
“Oh, I could not bear that!” said Meta; “but it is so different from what I thought!”
“Ah! you had an Arcadia of good little girls in straw hats, such as I see in Blanche’s little books,” said the doctor, “all making the young lady an oracle, and doing wrong—if they do it at all—in the simplest way, just for an example to the others.”
“Dr. May! How can you know so well? But do you really think it is their fault, or mine?”