Sally [blurts out]. She's broken one of them!
Catherine. You don't mean it!
Sally. Yes, she has!
Catherine. Let me see it. Oh, you wicked child! [Shakes Tibbie vigorously by one arm. Sally, attempting a rescue, seizes her by the other, and the poor child is jerked about unmercifully.] She's smashed its face right in! Now, whoever heard of such naughtiness?
[Tibbie escapes and twists about to get her
back to the two.
Sally. She didn't do it out of naughtiness, at all, Miss Catherine. She's as good a child as ever lived! [Tibbie's shoulders give a convulsive heave.] It was an accident entirely. But that's just as bad for me—I suppose I shall have to say it was me did it.
Catherine. And then they'll say what was I doing while the kitchen-help was poking about in the lady's chamber. No; you don't get me into no trouble, Sally Bean! You'd much better say how it was—how that you asked me if you just might bring a little girl to look, and I said you might, out of pure good-nature, being Christmas is rightly for children, and I've a softness for them. And while we was both in the kitchen, she slipped away from us, and come here and done it before we knew. And the child will say herself that it was so. You'll be packed off, dead sure, out of this place, if you let on you meddled with them yourself. She won't have her things meddled with—— There! I hear the door now. There comes that old cat Bonnet.
[Enter Mrs. Bonnet, her cheek bones and
the end of her nose brilliant with the cold.
She carries a paper bag, and speaks with
an impediment and a breath of peppermint.
Bonnet. What's the matter? What child is that?
Catherine. It happened this way, Mrs. Bonnet. I allowed Sally to fetch this child up to see Mrs. Darling's dolls.—Just for a treat, of course—never thinking Sally'd be so careless as to let one of them get broken. But that's what she done. I'd just stepped out for a moment, never for a minute supposing anything like this could happen, but you just see for yourself. That doll can't be mended no way at all. And now, Mrs. Bonnet, what's to be done?