And as she ran, sobs broke from her, solely on account of her physical woes.
Within the wicket gate she walked slowly. How could fear of outer darkness remain, when the dinning-room window sent such a bar of light beyond.
She crept softly along the verandah to the window and peeped in. Her father was lying on the old cane lounge, his eyes upon her mother who sat at the piano, in a pretty fresh dress, flower-like as ever. For a space, while little boy-Betty looked, she just touched the keys tenderly as if she loved them like her flowers, then she struck a few chords, and began to sing "Home, Sweet Home," in her sweet girlish voice.
And Betty turned away, the tears running down her cheeks, and her small heart aching.
"I've been bad again," she said, "and I meant to be good always. I don't believe you can be good till you are grown up." She ran along the passage into the little bedroom which she and Dot and Nancy shared, and she fell down by Dot's quiet white bed and buried her face in the quilt.
"Bad again," she sobbed. "I've been bad again. Oh, I'm glad I got thrashed, it ought to do me good." But it is to be feared her gladness was not very deep, because a sense of great satisfaction swept over her as she remembered, she had kicked, really kicked, big John Brown.
CHAPTER IX
DOROTHEA'S FRIENDS
Alma Montague, a wealthy doctor's daughter; Elsie and Minnie Stevenson, daughters of a Queensland squatter; and Nellie Harden, only child of a Supreme Court Judge, were Dorothea Bruce's "intimate" friends. Mona Parbury was her only "bosom" friend. Thus she defined them herself when speaking of them to members of her family and to the girls themselves, who were one and all eager to stand a "bosom" friend to pretty Thea Bruce as they called her.