The three little girls were in the rose garden. It was just after luncheon and Granny Flynn had said they must do something in the way of quiet exercise, before they went to swim in the Magic Mirror. They had decided to decorate the house with flowers.
“She was rather horrid, wasn’t she?” Maida agreed absently. “So was her brother.”
“You expect boys to have bad manners,” Laura commented scathingly, “but a girl ought to behave herself better than that. She made me so mad I wanted to stick my tongue out at her.”
“I wanted to box her ears,” announced Rosie fiercely.
“She seemed to take such a dislike to us—just on sight!” Maida went on. “I don’t understand it. We didn’t do anything to her. We—”
“Why we’d never even seen her before,” Rosie interrupted in a crescendo of irritation.
“She acted as though,” Maida went straight on, “she was afraid of us for some reason, as though she thought we were going to do—” She paused—“well I don’t know what,” she concluded.
“I hope we never see the disagreeable thing again,” Laura said.
“We probably will,” Maida declared. “We’ll be going to the gypsy camp all the time, but of course she won’t come to the Little House.”
“If she does,” Rosie threatened, “I’ll tell her to go home.”