‘Don’t be so cross, Val,’ said Mysie. ‘She can’t help being tired.’
‘Why did she come, then, when nobody wanted her?’
‘For shame, Val,’ said Gillian, ‘you know mamma would be very angry to hear you say anything so unkind.’
‘It’s quite true, though,’ muttered Valetta.
‘Never mind, Dolly, dear,’ said Mysie, shocked. ‘Val doesn’t really mean it, you know.’
‘Yes, she does,’ said Dolores, shaking her comforter off; ‘you all do! I wish I had never come here.’
Mysie tried in her own persevering way to argue again that Val was only put out, and disappointed at having to turn back, to which Valetta, in spite of Gillian’s endeavour to silence her, added, ‘So stupid of her to come out! What did she do it for?’
Dolores, who hardly ever cried, was tired into crying now. ‘You grudge me everything; you wouldn’t let me speak one single word to Uncle Regie, and kept bothering about! I’ll never do anything with you again! I won’t.’
‘Did you want to speak to Uncle Regie?’ asked Mysie.
‘To be sure I did! He is my uncle, that I knew ever so long before you did, and you never let him speak to me.’