“Nelly, you surprise me!” cried Grey. “How can you talk so giddily, so foolishly about such things.”
“Because I am no longer a child,” cried the girl, proudly, and she drew herself up and walked backwards and forwards across the room. “Do you suppose I do not know how handsome I am, and how people admire me? Well, I’m not going to be always kept down. Look at the long, weary years of misery we have had at that wretched school.”
“Helen, you hurt me,” said Grey. “Your words are cruel. No one could have been kinder to us than the Miss Twettenhams.”
“Kinder—nonsense! Treated us like infants; but it is over now, and I mean to be free. Who is that on the gravel path? Oh! it’s poor Miss Rosebury. What a funny, sharp little body she is!”
“Always so kind and genial to us,” said Grey.
“To you. She likes you as much as she detests me.”
“Oh, Nelly!”
“She does; but not more than I detest her. She would not have me here at all if she could help it.”
“Oh! why do you say such things as that, Helen?”
“Because they are true. She does not like me because her brother is so attentive; and she seemed quite annoyed yesterday when the doctor spent so long feeling my pulse and talking his physic jargon to me. And—oh, Grey, hush! Come gently—here, beside this curtain! Don’t let them see you! What a discovery! Let’s go and fetch the Reverend Arthur to see as well.”