"That's a lion," she explained, in between great volumes of sound. "Lions eat people all up. So do wolves. Now I'm a wolf. Hear me crunch their bones!"
There was a horrible snarl under the bed, and something white and shining made a snatch at my foot, and then retreated, to return the next moment in a panting rush, much too real to be pleasant.
"Oh, please, Lily-Ann, I don't want to play wild beasts any more!" I exclaimed, half afraid; but only half afraid, for she was very obedient to my whims, and, when I cried loud enough, came out in a crushed state to be a little girl again.
At first I liked Lily-Ann. She was so companionable, and then she knew such quantities of strange things. For instance, it was she who showed me how to make my hair curl. It could be done by eating crusts! There had always been a great deal of trouble about my crusts. I would never eat them, not even after I had been reminded of all the poor children in the world who had not a crust apiece to stay their hunger on, and whom it seemed that I should benefit in some marvelous way by eating mine.
"They can have these," I replied, generously, to such appeals to my feelings. "I'll save them for them every day."
That, however, was before Lily-Ann came, and I learned that a crusty diet was warranted to make the hair curl. To think that little Rhoda Harcourt might have curly hair! What a nice thing that would be! Of course it meant months of work, but Lily-Ann, whose hair twisted from the roots, must surely know. Under her encouragement I ate all my own crusts, and begged so earnestly for more at the table that I became a wonder to the family.
"Is the curl coming, Lily-Ann?" I would ask, eagerly, in the mornings when she stood over me, comb in hand.
"It's coming more and more every day," she asserted, to my great satisfaction.