"Bees, child! What do you mean? Either you or he must have been crazy!"
"No, not at all. There are more than two hundred kinds of bees in England, and he wanted me to notice the difference between them and flies. Miss Browning, I can't help seeing what you fancy," said Molly, as red as fire, "but it is very wrong; it is all a mistake. I won't speak another word about Mr. Roger or Hamley at all, if it puts such silly notions into your head."
"Highty-tighty! Here's a young lady to be lecturing her elders! Silly notions indeed! They are in your head, it seems. And let me tell you, Molly, you are too young to let your mind be running on lovers."
Molly had been once or twice called saucy and impertinent, and certainly a little sauciness came out now.
"I never said what the 'silly notion' was, Miss Browning; did I now, Miss Phœbe? Don't you see, dear Miss Phœbe, it is all her own interpretation, and according to her own fancy, this foolish talk about lovers?"
Molly was flaming with indignation; but she had appealed to the wrong person for justice. Miss Phœbe tried to make peace after the fashion of weak-minded people, who would cover over the unpleasant sight of a sore, instead of trying to heal it.
"I'm sure I don't know anything about it, my dear. It seems to me that what Dorothy was saying was very true—very true indeed; and I think, love, you misunderstood her; or, perhaps, she misunderstood you; or I may be misunderstanding it altogether; so we'd better not talk any more about it. What price did you say you were going to give for the drugget in Mr. Gibson's dining-room, sister?"
So Miss Browning and Molly went on till evening, each chafed and angry with the other. They wished each other good-night, going through the usual forms in the coolest manner possible. Molly went up to her little bedroom, clean and neat as a bedroom could be, with draperies of small delicate patchwork—bed-curtains, window-curtains, and counterpane; a japanned toilette-table, full of little boxes, with a small looking-glass affixed to it, that distorted every face that was so unwise as to look in it. This room had been to the child one of the most dainty and luxurious places ever seen, in comparison with her own bare, white-dimity bedroom; and now she was sleeping in it, as a guest, and all the quaint adornments she had once peeped at as a great favour, as they were carefully wrapped up in cap-paper, were set out for her use. And yet how little she had deserved this hospitable care; how impertinent she had been; how cross she had felt ever since! She was crying tears of penitence and youthful misery when there came a low tap to the door. Molly opened it, and there stood Miss Browning, in a wonderful erection of a nightcap, and scantily attired in a coloured calico jacket over her scrimpy and short white petticoat.
"I was afraid you were asleep, child," said she, coming in and shutting the door. "But I wanted to say to you we've got wrong to-day, somehow; and I think it was perhaps my doing. It's as well Phœbe shouldn't know, for she thinks me perfect; and when there's only two of us, we get along better if one of us thinks the other can do no wrong. But I rather think I was a little cross. We'll not say any more about it, Molly; only we'll go to sleep friends,—and friends we'll always be, child, won't we? Now give me a kiss, and don't cry and swell your eyes up;—and put out your candle carefully."
"I was wrong—it was my fault," said Molly, kissing her.