Mistress Vines answered, with unwonted sternness:
“Come hither, Hope, and seat yourself upon the cushion. You must leave off these ways.”
The little lady walked to the side of the room, where, leaning her shoulder against a pilaster, she crossed one foot over the other, and bent her head, saying:
“I will stand here, please, mamma; I hate to sit down.”
“I prefer you should sit,” persisted Mistress Vines.
“Indeed, I can not, mamma. I feel as if I should choke, tightened up in one of those chairs. Indeed, I can not sit down, mamma.”
The sisters could not refrain from a slight titter, which was instantly checked, for the parents were both severely grave, and Miss Bloomfield, the governess, shook her little decorous head till every cork-screw curl upon it was whirling and jerking in a perfect storm of reprehension.
Before, however, a word had been spoken, Hope suddenly recovered her native vivacity. She eyed the group with a comical shake of the head, and burst into one of her merry laughs. Coming forward, she knelt upon the cushion at her mother’s feet, and tossing back her hair till it enshrouded her like a vail, she cried:
“I know all you will say to the bad girl; I will be mamma, and reprimand Hope. Listen!
“Hope, you are too idle, and too wild—no better than a wild Indian. You are a very unmaidenly girl, fit for nothing good. Why do you not sit bolt upright in high-backed chairs, as your sisters do? Look at them! How nice they are! Not a hair of the head out of place. Hear them make ugly sounds on a hollow board! See how ashamed they are of you, Hope! You are a grief to us all, Hope, indeed you are. To-day John Bonyton pulled you out of the water like a fish. You are a trial and a plague, Hope!”