“No, Grace, I am not, and there’s an end of it, as far as I am concerned. If you want to sit down I can’t prevent you; but I am going up to my room to lie down.”
“You know you’re not allowed in the dormitories in the daytime?”
“I know that quite well, except when I have a headache, as I happen to have. I shall let Miss Archdale know when she comes back. Good-bye, Grace.”
“No, no, you can’t go like that, Hannah. Hannah, please, please let me speak to you! Hannah, it’s most awfully important. You see, we are all, all, all of us mixed up in this thing.”
“In what thing? I am not mixed up in anything with you, so don’t you think it.”
“I think you’re most horribly, beastly unkind,” said Grace. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you.”
“I know quite well what is the matter with myself. I should not have made you that promise; if I hadn’t, I should have tried for the prize. As I have made it, I am not going to try. It would have been exceedingly important for me to get the prize, far more important than you have the least idea of; but I have done for myself now. All the same, if you think I am going to tell any more lies you’re mistaken. I suppose no one in the Lower School will try, unless perhaps Prissy and Annie and Rufa. They’re all right, of course; dear little Elisabeth is too young.”
“Oh dear, what is to be done?” said Grace. Her face clouded over, then it got very red, and she felt considerably frightened. “But please, Hannah, do let me speak.”
“You may speak as much as you like, I’m not preventing you.”
“Yes, but won’t you listen?”