“How did you do it?”
“I tripped last night in the dark and knocked it against that iron fence by the driveway. I was running as quick as I could to make change and all of a sudden I fell down and my money-bag—the one Miss Cissy gave me with five dollars in it—jogged out of my hand and I hit my head and—I guess you’ll believe I don’t feel very well now!”
Under all Priscilla’s real sweetness of nature there lay a hidden rock of obstinacy that made her, at times, a very difficult little personage to deal with. Hannah had encountered it often and often, but Hannah was indulgent and excused her pet to herself by saying: “She’s so young; she’ll outgrow it by and by.”
Polly had, up to this, given in almost entirely to Priscilla, no matter what her whims might be, and so had not really had any conflict with the quiet persistence and iron will that underlay the little girl’s other really lovable traits. But she was to have one now.
Priscilla listened attentively to the story of the bag and the bruise and then repeated slowly: “I don’t think you’re very polite. I think you might get my doll.”
“Hannah told me not to wait on you so much. She says it spoils you.”
Priscilla silently regarded the toes of her shoes and seemed to be considering. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and she did not reply for a minute. Then she said gently: “I think you might get my doll.”
Polly pretended not to hear. She bent over the mumpy Ruth and drew her handkerchief across the sick infant’s chest to shield her from the supposed fresh sea-breeze that was blowing inshore smartly from the great stretch of imaginary ocean beyond.