“Tell us a story, Robina,” asked Cissie Price.
“Not now,” said Robina; “and you are not to pull me, babies, for it makes me too hot. Curly, sit still, you little imp! I’ll put you off my knee if you don’t behave.”
Now none of the other girls in the third form would have dared to speak to Curly in that tone. They would have received a slap in the face for their pains, but Curly took it quite meekly from Robina.
“I—is—dood. I is—vedy dood. I ’ove oo,” she said.
She nestled up close to Robina, pulling that young person’s hand round her waist, and patting the said hand with her own two fat little ones and saying, over and over again: “I ’ove oo, Wobbin—I ’ove oo!”
It was on this scene that Harriet and Jane appeared. Since Robina had come, Harriet had rather avoided her. She had been jealous, poor child, from the first moment; but now she altered her tactics, and forcing her way through the group, sat down close to the new favourite.
“There’s no room here,” said Robina. “Go a little further off, please, Harriet; you are pushing little Annie and making her cry.”
“I don’t care twopence for little Annie!” cried Harriet, rudely. “I have as good a right to sit here as anybody else. Don’t press me, Annie; if I am in the way, you’re the person to make room, not me. Go back to your nursery, won’t you?”
Annie, who was a very timid child, began to cry. Robina immediately rose, lifted Curly Pate on to her shoulder, and said to the three other little ones:
“I have changed my mind. I will tell you a story now, but no one else shall listen; it’s a lovely, true, true fairy tale. We’ll just sit under that tree, and you shall all hear it.”