"I never could imagine," answered Bea, with evident curiosity.
"She won't call him, uncle, and the dress he sent her is in mama's room, and Olive says, she'll never wear it."
"May be she would give it me," suggested Kat. "I think hers was prettier than any of the rest."
"Well, I don't," said Ernestine, taking exceptions to this remark also. "Why hers is black?"
"I'm perfectly aware of that, also, that yours is purple, Bea's brown, mine and Kittie's grey; tell me something I don't know," said Kat flippantly. "I wish ours were black, it's so stylish."
That black was more stylish than purple, was an idea quite beneath Ernestine's notice, so she went back to her former query.
"I would like to know, anyhow, what makes Olive dislike him so." For Mrs. Dering had not thought it necessary that the girls should know of their father's final appeal, and Mr. Congreve's reception thereof; so they were all equally curious, and so, nobody being able to give an answer, Kat ventured an assertion.
"She hates him just because it's a part of her religion to hate everybody, and, to go around with her fist doubled up ready to fight. I believe she'd hate us with a little trying."
"Kat," cried Beatrice, with some severity. "You must not speak so, it is wrong, and you don't mean it Why, if any one else was to say such things about Olive, you'd pretty near fight."
"To be sure I would," said Kat with ready inconsistency. "I truly think Olive is a trump, and I'd cheerfully knock anybody down who said she wasn't. I don't know what we would have done without her in the trouble, and I do wish she wasn't so odd, and stayed away from us so."