"How can you say so. Gerald? Did you not know that you ought not to scribble in books? Can you say that Miss Morley has not often spoken to you about the Atlas?"
"If you call 'O Sir Gerald!' and 'O you sad boy,' desiring me in a rational way, I don't," said Gerald, imitating the tones, "laughing and letting me go on; I thought she liked it."
"Now seriously, Gerald."
"Well, I mean that she did not care. If people tell me a thing they should make me mind them."
"You should mind without being made, Gerald.
"I would if I thought them in earnest. But now, Marian, was it not a horrid shame of her to speak just as if I had been always disobeying her on purpose, making Mrs. Lyddell go into a rage with me for what was entirely her own fault?"
"No, no, Gerald, you cannot say it was her fault that you spoilt the picture."
"I think she ought to beg my pardon for telling such stories about me," repeated Gerald sullenly.
"Recollect yourself, Gerald, you know she meant that she had put you in mind that you ought not; and don't you think that, true or not, your speech was very rude?"
"If I was to beg her pardon it would mean that she spoke the truth, which she did not, for she never took any pains to prevent me from drawing in the map-book, or any where else."