"Why should we obey our mothers?" said Sarah. "We're as good as they are."
"Oh, no," said Mary, in a voice shocked to a strangled whisper. Nevertheless, she began, a little, to despise her confused parents. There came a day when Mary told a very large lie indeed; she said that she had brushed her teeth when she had not, and she told this lie quite unprompted by Sarah. She was more and more miserable as the days passed.
No one knew exactly the things that the two little girls did when they were alone on an afternoon in Sarah's room. Sarah sent Hortense about her business, and then set herself to the subdual of Mary's mind and character. There would be moments like this, Sarah would turn off the electric light, and the room would be lit only by the dim shining of the evening sky.
"Now, Mary, you go over to that corner—that dark one—and wait there till I tell you to come out. I'll go outside the room, and then you'll see what will happen."
"Oh, no, Sarah, I don't want to."
"Why not, you silly baby?"
"I—I don't want to."
"Well, it will be much worse for you if you don't."
"I want to go home."
"You can after you have done that."