"It strikes me you are a poor sort after all," said Irene, gazing at Rosamund attentively.
"Well, whether I am poor or not, I'm going to stay with you for a bit, and if you get any better I'll stay on; but if you get no better I shall go straight home to mother, for you will be hopeless. There now, you know."
"Oh, it is so delightful to have you! You don't know what you are to me. The courageous way you speak! I don't believe you'd be a bit afraid if I put a frog on your neck."
By almost sleight-of-hand Irene suited the deed to the word, for a cold frog of enormous size suddenly began to crawl along Rosamund's neck. Rosamund suppressed a shudder, for she would not for the world show the girl that she loathed frogs; but she took the creature and laid it gently on the ground.
"That is very silly," she said. "You are not to do it again."
"I am not to do it again?"
"No; not to me or to any one else."
"I thought I'd put a small toad just inside the teapot for James when he was going to make the tea this afternoon, for it would jump up and finish that affair of the wasps and spiders that occurred this morning."
"You are not to do it. It is ridiculous; there's neither sense nor fun nor anything else in it. It is downright, positive cruelty. You make your mother's life wretched, and you make the servants miserable. As to poor Miss Frost—oh, you can go to see her or not, just as you please. I am going into her room now."
"Are you indeed? But why should you take any interest in Frosty?"