“You’re very unkind, Peggy; when you speak in that tone you almost make me cry,” said Kitty. Kitty spoke loud on purpose, for Miss Archdale was passing the quadrangle. The governess half-stopped and half-looked round. Kitty suddenly called to her. “Please, Miss Archdale,” she said.
“Yes, what’s the matter?”
“I wish you’d speak to Peggy; she’s so unkind to me.”
“Are you really unkind to Kitty, Peggy?” said Miss Archdale, glancing at the Irish girl.
“It isn’t me fault, Miss Archdale dear,” replied Peggy; “it’s that I don’t take to her at all, at all, and never mean to. Why can’t she let me be, Miss Archdale dear? Why, glory! there’s room enough for us both in this old world.”
“I want to be friends with every one,” said Kitty in a modest, sad voice.
“Well, then, I don’t,” said Peggy. “It’s that portrait you’re craving for, not me nor me friendship.—There now, I’ve gone down a peg in your estimation; and, Miss Archdale dear, ye’ll be doing right if ye put a bad mark against me name. But, why then, I don’t care, for I couldn’t collogue wid her if it was twenty portraits of twenty old ladies I was to lose.”
Peggy crossed the quadrangle and disappeared into the Upper School. There was a look of secret triumph in Kitty’s dark eyes.
“There,” she said to Miss Archdale, “she’s always going on like that; however hard I try, she will not be friendly. It isn’t kind of her, is it, Miss Archdale?”
“Perhaps she has a reason, Kitty, that I know nothing about.”