“Ah-ha, my dear doggie!” said the good lady. “Somebody has come to the wrong box, has she not? Somebody thought I would take her in, and be kind to her, and pet her, and give her your cream, did she not? But no one shall have my doggie’s cream; no, that they shan’t!”
“Mrs. Cameron,” said Flower, when these particularly clever and lucid remarks had continued for nearly an hour, “may I open the window of the carriage at this side? I’m quite stifling.”
Mrs. Cameron laid a firm, fat hand upon the window cord, and bent again over the pampered Scorpion.
“And is my doggie’s asthma not to be considered for the sake of somebody who ought not to be here, who was never invited nor wished for, and is now to be returned like a bad penny to where she came from? Is my own dearest little dog to suffer for such a person’s whims? Oh, fie! oh, fie! Well, come here my Scorpion; your mistress won’t reject you.”
For Flower, in a fit of ungovernable temper, had suddenly dashed the petted form of Scorpion to the ground.
The poor angry girl now buried herself in the farthest corner of the railway carriage. From there she could hear Mrs. Cameron muttering about “somebody’s” temper, and hoping that “somebody” would get her deserts.
These remarks, uttered several times, frightened Flower so much that at last she looked up, and said, in a queer, startled voice:
“You don’t think Dr. Maybright is going to die? You can’t be so awfully wicked as to think that.”
“Oh, we are wicked, are we, Scorpion?” said Mrs. Cameron, her fat hand gently stroking down Scorpion’s smooth fur from tip to tail. “Never mind, Scorpion, my own; never mind. When the little demon of temper gets into somebody she isn’t quite accountable, is she?”
Flower wondered if any restraining power would keep her from leaping out of the window.