"Rob her? What do you mean, Kate? If you were not my own cousin I'd make you prove your words," said Marion angrily. "What do you mean, I say? If you are a thief, begging me to give you her postage-stamps, I am not; I can buy postage-stamps for myself."
"I did not ask you for Mrs. Maple's stamps," said Kate indignantly; "I asked you to lend me your own until I could pay you for them."
"Lend you my own! why, you knew I had not got any," exclaimed Marion. "Where was I to get them but out of the desk?"
"Well, I've kept account of how many stamps I have had, and you shall put them back. But it was not the stamps I was thinking of, Marion."
"Oh, no, of course not; we never see ourselves as other people see us."
"I told you William came in this afternoon. Well, he ate a good deal of pastry off the plates, and then gave me twopence for some buns, expecting half a dozen, I suppose, for he was very much surprised that I only gave him two, and said he was always served at the wholesale price, and then went away without paying for anything he had eaten."
"Well, suppose he did?" said Marion, coolly, "didn't he tell you he was keeping an account with me?"
"He told me to tell you he would settle with you about that."
"Well, what more do you want? How dare you charge me with being a thief? The idea of your coming here and saying such things of me, who was here long before you were! It only shows what a bad, wicked girl you must be, and what you would do yourself if you only had the chance. I have a great mind to go to Mrs. Maple this minute, and tell her what a dangerous person she has in her house, and how we have all been deceived in you."
Marion had almost talked herself out of breath, and Kate out of her suspicions. As her cousin went upstairs to take off her things Kate began to feel like a culprit in the matter, as though she ought to beg her cousin's pardon for judging her unjustly; and yet when she was left alone again calmly to think over all that had happened that afternoon and many previous afternoons, she could not but think that her suspicions were correct; she rather dreaded Marion coming down again, but, to her surprise, Marion seemed to have forgotten her anger by the time she appeared, and came into the shop smiling and pleasant as though nothing had happened.