“Oh, now you are going to be angry, too! But then, it would not matter.”
“Why would it not matter?”
“Because I am only Mamie,” answered the girl, looking up affectionately into his face. “You never care what I say, do you?”
“I do not know about that,” George said. “What do you mean by saying that you are only Mamie?”
“Mamie is nobody, you know. Mamie is only a cousin, a little girl who wants nothing of George but toys and picture-books, a silly child, a foolish, half-witted little thing that cannot understand a great man—much less tease him. Can she?”
“Mamie is a witch,” George answered with a laugh. There was indeed something strangely bewitching about the girl. She could say things to him which he would not have suffered his own sister to say if he had had one.
“I wish I were! I wish I could make wax dolls, like people I hate, as the witches used to do, and stick pins into their hearts and melt them before the fire, little by little.”
“What has got into your head this morning, you murderous, revengeful little thing?”
“There are many things in my head,” she answered, suddenly changing her manner, and speaking in an oddly demure tone, with downcast eyes and folded hands. “There are more things in my head than are dreamt of in yours—at least, I hope so.”
“Tell me some of them.”