A sulky voice from within murmured something, and Robina opened the door. Harriet was standing with her back to the door. She was pretending to gaze out of the window. When the knock came, she imagined that it was Jane, coming to expostulate with her. Had this happened, she would probably have given vent to her feelings in no measured language; but when she turned and saw Robina, the smouldering fire in her breast rose to white heat.
“Go away!” she said, just glancing at Robina and Ralph and then resuming her position with her back to them. “I am busy at present: go away.”
“You aren’t busy, Harriet,” said Ralph, laughing; “why, you’re doing nothing at all.”
“Yes I am; I am thinking; go away, both of you, I don’t wish to talk to you.”
“Oh, Harriet!” said Ralph. There was a cry of pain in his voice, and just for a minute Harriet’s resolve to be intensely disagreeable wavered; but Robina’s voice recalled her to her worst self.
“Ralph, I must!” she whispered. Then she said aloud: “I do want you to ride Bo-peep this morning, Harriet. And you can easily wear my habit, although it may be a little big for you. Please, Harriet, do come downstairs and be nice and jolly with us all. You shall ride Bo-peep, and I will ride whichever donkey you have selected. I love riding a donkey, it is such fun.”
“Oh!” said Harriet; “oh!—before I’d demean myself to tell such lies! You love to ride on a donkey, do you? Then ride one, I am sure I don’t care. But as to my demeaning myself by getting on your pony’s back—I may be small, but I’m not as small as all that! No: go, both of you; I hate and detest you both. Ralph, you need not consider me your mother any more. I am not your school-mother—I am nothing at all to you. I am just a very cross, angry girl and oh, do go away, please!”
“Come, Ralph,” said Robina.
She took the little boy to the door. She opened the door; she pushed Ralph outside.
“You are just angry, Harriet,” she said then; “but I know you will be sorry by and by; and indeed, indeed, neither Ralph nor I are what you think us.”