“What has upset you, Rosalie? You are most argumentative to-night.”
“I expect you are spoiling me, and I’ve never been accustomed to it. You should treat me with stern severity, and you would find me improve wonderfully.”
“And you just preaching unfailing suavity.”
“Oh! I preach by the Creed of Contrary.”
But Rosalie’s argumentative mood sprang really from the irritation that followed on the evening’s escapade.
In a cooler moment, and on reflection, she was not over and above proud of the way in which she had fled so precipitately before the enemy. And yet what was there to be done? To have stood still was to have hazarded, so Rosalie thought, far more than she had any intention of hazarding. She registered a mental vow never to go out at night alone again, and wished, oh! wished most intensely, that nothing had tempted her out that night. In her own room the frog broke the silence by saying:
“You seem very upset to-night.”
“Yes. I—I met Mr. Barringcourt, and I ran away.”
“What made you run?”
“I was frightened of him.”