“Peggy Desmond.”
“At poor little Peggy Desmond. She will make that child’s life unbearable.”
Jessie burst into a peal of laughter. “Little you know, Peggy, if you think any one will make her life unbearable! She’ll just have her own way, and be a match for The Imp if any one can.”
“If I could think that!” said Bridget. “I wish I might have a talk with her; but there, I daren’t—I daren’t appear to side with any one. What I should like to do would be to consult dear, dear, kind Miss Smith, she is so affectionate and so good to all those children; but at the same time I don’t believe that she is really the right person to speak to. I think the right person is Mrs. Fleming.”
“And now, suppose you did speak to her,” said Alison, “what would you say?”
Bridget looked a little puzzled at this.
“There it is!” continued Alison. “We all suspect her, we none of us like her; but there isn’t a single girl in the school who can lay any wrong, absolute wrong-doing, at her door; all we can say about her is that we don’t like her. And when it comes to that, have we a right to ruin a girl’s future by making mischief?”
“But when every girl in the whole school dislikes her, except those Dodds, there must be a reason for it,” pursued Bridget.
“Oh Biddy, you are Irish, you truly are!” said Molly, running up to her friend at this moment and kissing her.
“I couldn’t bear the look on that other dear little Irish girl’s face, that seemed to finish me altogether,” said Bridget O’Donnell at that moment. “I wish you’d tell us about her, tell us something of her story; how is it she has come to you?”