“Why, I am afraid it is naughty Annie Forest.”
“She’s not naughty! Annie sha’n’t go to any nasty place. I hate you, Mary Bell.” The little one looked round the group with flashing eyes of defiance, then wrenched herself away to return to her younger companions.
“It was stupid of you to say that, Mary,” remarked one of the girls. “Well,” she continued, “I suppose it is all settled, and poor Annie, to say the least of it, is not a lady. For my own part, I always thought her great fun, but if she is proved guilty of this offence I wash my hands of her.”
“We all wash our hands of her,” echoed the girls, with the exception of Susan Drummond, who, as usual, was nodding in her chair.
“What do you say, Susy?” asked one or two—“you have not opened your lips all this lime.”
“I—eh?—what?” asked Susan, stretching herself and yawning, “oh, about Annie Forest—I suppose you are right, girls. Is not that the tea-gong? I’m awfully hungry.”
Hester Thornton went into the tea-room that evening feeling particularly virtuous, and with an idea that she had distinguished herself in some way.
Poor foolish, thoughtless Hester, she little guessed what seed she had sown, and what a harvest she was preparing for her own reaping by-and-by.