'Well, sometimes when mamma has been working very hard—not now, you know; but it used to be like that—she used to say things that hurt me, and made me want to cry. And then I used to look at her poor tired face and say to myself, "It's the hard work and not mamma that says those things;" and then, of course, I did not mind. And when you have once had to work too hard, you never get over it as you do over other things.'
'What other things?'
'Oh—fancies and—and things like that.'
'Love troubles?'
She looked up at me with a shy, sideways glance that was full of the most perfectly unconscious witchery.
'Yes, mamma says they're nonsense.'
'She liked nonsense, too, once.'
Babiole looked up at me with the delight of a common perception.
'Yes, I've often thought that. And then all men are not like——'
She stopped short.