“Huh!” cried the child. “It may be a nice name, but it’s all that’s nice about her. She’s just as horrid as she can be. I hate her. She ain’t my mother a bit. It ’most seems as if I never had any.” And she began to visit upon the water a series of spiteful kicks that spattered even Marvin’s page.
“Oh!” said he.
The two then looked at each other for a minute. But it was the child who spoke first.
“What do you do?”
“What do I do?” queried Marvin, puzzled. “I don’t do much of anything that I know of.”
“I mean what do you do that’s bad?” promptly returned the child. “They told me I mustn’t ever speak to you, because you’re bad. I’m bad too. That’s why I came.”
“Oh!” laughed Marvin. “Supposing you tell me what you do.”
“Lots of things—tear my clothes, and muddy my shoes, and sit in the grass, and climb trees, and slap, and kick, and run away whenever I get a chance. Most of all, though, I play in the brook. Are you as bad as that?”
Marvin held out his hand.
“Just about!” he told her. “But don’t run away from here yet a while, Daphne—or turn into a laurel. We have too many things to talk about, you and I.”