"How can that be? I am sure no one can be right who is unkind."
"No," said Amy, looking a little perplexed; "but then it would have been deceit."
"Deceit! what deceit?" asked Margaret; "she had nothing to do with it; all I wanted was for her to hold her tongue."
"But your uncle would have thought the drawing was yours, when it was not."
"And what harm would that have done? I will venture to say I could have finished just as good a one if I had tried; it was only a sketch. No, no, it was mere ill-nature—she wished for the picture herself."
"I tell you what, Margaret," said Dora, "she did not wish any such thing, because uncle Henry pressed her to have it, and she refused, and made him put it by till this year, that you might try again."
"I hate such hypocrites," said Margaret, "and she is so cold-hearted too. I used to kiss her and love her when first she came, but she never seemed to care a bit about it; and now I never go near her, if I can help it."
"I should not mind anything," said Dora, "if she did not put one down so; but she has such a way of saying things are right, I can't bear it—as if we did not know what was right as well as she does. I shall teach her the difference between Miss Harrington and Miss Morton, I can tell her, when I come out."
"And then, people call her pretty," interrupted Margaret. "It makes me so angry, sometimes, to hear them go on about her beautiful eyes, and her black hair. She need have some beauty, for she spends quite enough time in dressing herself, I know."
Amy listened to these remarks in silent astonishment, and with an increasing feeling of dislike to Miss Morton. Not that she agreed with Margaret as to her unkindness in the affair of the picture, for her strict sense of what was right and sincere told her, in a moment, that she could not have acted otherwise; but it was impossible to hear so much said against a perfect stranger, without thinking that there must be some foundation for it, especially as Amy was accustomed to be very particular herself in everything she said, and had not yet learned to suspect her cousins of exaggeration.