“At first they used to make me stay down with them at night after dinner, but by and by I was allowed to go upstairs. I said I wanted to study. I always kept a study book open on the table, and would go to reading it as soon as they came up. Papa used to come in once in awhile, and she was always asking me if she could help me with my lessons. She said she used to help her brothers.
“After a year, one of the brothers came to visit. He was a real nice boy, and I would have liked him only he was so silly about her; used to want to be with her all the time, and put his arm around her and all that! We had a real good time though, and I thought that I had been real nice to her before him until the day he went home. I was in the library, and he came in. I was just going to ask him to put his autograph in my album when he said: ‘Gee, you are a disagreeable little mutt! My sister would half kill me for saying it, but honest, I don’t see how she stands you!’
“Of course I just walked out of the room. I knew then that she had been telling things about me. And I knew that must be the reason why papa was so different to me.”
“But was he?” asked Elise wonderingly.
“Yes, he was, and Miss Hooker says it is all my fault. I had been coldly polite to her for a good while before that. I read about a girl who was abused by a stepmother and the girl was too noble to abuse her in return. She was just ‘coldly polite,’ the book said, and so was I. But after that horrid boy went home I let myself be as mean as I could.”
Elise nodded. “I saw it in your face,” she said.
“And the more I thought of it, the more I was able to act ugly. It is so funny, Elise, the way she makes everybody like her. Papa just gets worse all the time, and the servants adore her, and she is so popular with all the people who come to the house. She makes them all like her—all but me.”
“We will talk about that later,” said Elise.
Lucy sighed. “Well, things have been getting worse and worse, but I think we have both tried to keep it from papa. We hate each other, but we don’t want him to know how bad things are in the house. Papa is not happy, though. Oh, he has talked and talked to me and threatened to send me to school, and I always tell him I wish he would. But the other day the worst happened. Papa had gone to the office, and I was reading in the library, and she was walking around and around, fussing and singing under her breath and sort of acting happy. It made me so mad. Presently she saw me looking at her, and she said, ‘Don’t you wonder why I am singing?’ and I said, ‘No, I had not noticed.’ She went right on: ‘I have had some good news, wonderful news, and I wonder if you would like to hear it, Lucy?’
“I said, ‘I am not at all interested,’ and went right on looking at my book. She came over and leaned down on the table close to my face, and stared and stared at me. She said, ‘Look at me, you bad, difficult, cruel child, look at me and tell me why you are bound to hate me so!’ I never saw anyone look so angry. Then her face changed and got pleasant again, and she said, ‘What have I done? Your own mother, if she can see this house and its unhappy inmates, knows that I have tried to make friends with you.’