"You don't mean it!"
"Yes, she has!"
"Let me see it. Oh, you wicked child! She's smashed its face right in! Now who ever heard of such naughtiness?"
Tibbie twisted about ever so little, to get her back turned towards the two.
"She didn't do it out of naughtiness at all, Miss Catherine. She's as good a child as ever lived!" At that Tibbie's shoulders gave a little convulsive heave. "It was an accident entirely. But that's just as bad for me. I suppose I shall have to say it was me did it."
"And then they'll say what was I doing while the kitchen help was poking about in the Mrs.'s chamber. No; you don't get me into trouble, Sally Bean! You'd much better say how it was—how that you asked me if you just might bring a little girl to look, and I said you might, out of pure good-nature, being Christmas is rightly for children, and I've a softness for them. And while we was both in the kitchen, she slipped away from us and came here and done it before we knew. And the child herself will say that it was so. You'll be packed off dead sure out of this place if you let on you meddled with them yourself. She won't have her things meddled with—There goes the bell. There comes that old cat Bonnet."
She hurried off to open.
"What's the matter?" said Mrs. Bonnet, elevating her eyebrows as she appeared at the door and looked into the room she had expected to find dark and still. She held a paper bag; she spoke with an impediment and a breath of peppermint. Her cheek-bones and the end of her nose were brilliant pink with the cold. "What child is that?"
Miss Catherine was behind Mrs. Bonnet. "It happened this way, Mrs. Bonnet," she began, and told the story with a little tactful adaptation to the intelligence of her audience, ending, "And now, Mrs. Bonnet, what's to be done?"
"Oh, you wicked little brat!" said Mrs. Bonnet. "I just want to get hold of you and shake you!"