“I remembered how furious the girl in the book was when her stepmother spoke of her mother, and I raised my hand and slapped her.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Elise, covering her eyes. “The poor, poor lady!”
Lucy went doggedly on.
“Of course I had no business to do that. She went to her room, and stayed there all day, and when papa came home he went right up. I was on my way to my room, and I heard him say, ‘I don’t believe it is a headache at all. I think Lucy must have been annoying you,’ and she said, ‘No,’ and papa said, ‘I shall send that child away to school.’ And she said, ‘No, give us one more chance. I am going to see Miss Hooker, her Scout Captain, and see if her influence is strong enough to make Lucy see things in the right way.’ As soon as I heard that I made up my mind to see the Captain first, so I went over and that was the day I saw you on the steps. We had had a long, long talk and she said I was all wrong and took away my trefoil. So here I am a dead Scout, and I am so unhappy that I don’t know what to do and I am going to run away. I want you to have my pony. I am going to send it over to your house tomorrow.”
“No, no, no!” cried Elise. “Everything is wrong; so wrong! Oh, let me think! That poor, poor lady! I am so, so sorry for her.”
“Sorry for her!” cried Lucy. “There is no need to be sorry for her! I am the one to be sorry for. She has everything.”
“Why has she?” asked Elise. “She has nothing that you have not. She has your most dear papa; so have you. You both have a most lovely home, everything beautiful, friends, comfort. You are safe in a great land, where no enemy may come and keel all you love. You have both the same things. You share them.” She sat thinking. “Yes, she is the one to be sorry for, because she is so disappoint. When she go to marry your père, she have something promised that she never gets and so she is full of mournsomeness.”
“She has everything papa can get for her,” said Lucy bitterly. “I wish you could see the pearls he gave her the other day.”
“Pearls!” said Elise scornfully. “What are pearls? He promised her something only you could give her, and now she has it not, and she is sad, and you are sad; everybody sad. What do you call her?”
“I don’t call her anything,” said Lucy stubbornly. “I wait until she looks at me and then I say what I want to say.”