FLOSSIE'S GRIEVANCES
It was just as well that May had had sufficient forethought to provide herself with a bundle of sweets in the shape of a peace-offering for Flossie, for when they got in they found Flossie in anything but an amiable mood.
And when Flossie was not in an amiable mood, she was anything but an agreeable young person.
She was sitting in the schoolroom, staring sullenly out of the window and kicking impatiently against the window-board in a way which upset Miss Clark's nerves until they could only be fairly described as "shattered."
She was sitting in the schoolroom, staring sullenly out of the window.
For everything from first to last had gone wrong with poor Flossie that morning. In the first place, she had been intensely disappointed at being left at home that Sarah might go in the carriage with Mrs. Stubbs. Flossie was particularly fond of going out with her mother in the carriage, and was also very fond of shopping. It was, therefore, quite in vain that Miss Clark tried to make her understand that Sarah had not been taken for favouritism, but simply in order that her aunt might buy her the clothes necessary for their trip to Brighton. Flossie thought and said it was a horrid shame, and vowed vengeance on the unfortunate and inoffensive, though offending, Sarah in consequence.
"Nasty little mean white-faced thing!" she exclaimed. "I suppose I shall always be shoved into the background now, just that she may be coddled up and made to think herself better than anybody else. Princess Sarah! Yes, that's to be the new idea. We're all to be put on one side for Princess Sarah."
"Flossie," said Miss Clark, very severely, "you ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. To be jealous of a poor little girl who has no father or mother, who has come among strangers at nine years old, and is fretting her poor little heart out for the sake of the father who loved her better than any one in all the world; to be jealous of her being taken out once when you know it is only on business they have gone--oh! for shame, Flossie! for shame!"
"Oh, well, she needn't fret after her pa so much," Flossie retorted, not taking Miss Clark's remarks to heart at all. "He didn't do so much for her. He wasn't a gentleman like Pa. If he had been, he'd have left her some money of her own."