Before this, no one had spoken to me about the new-comer, and there, I think, was where the wrong began; but the woman's meaning flashed into my mind in a moment, and I tossed my head scornfully, without speaking. Nurse Sikes was probably not an ill-natured woman,—she could not have been, since no face was so welcome as hers in the sick rooms of all the neighborhood,—but she was a very injudicious one. I suppose my idle, vain contempt and indignation amused her, and so she went on provoking me.
"Ho, ho, Miss Fine Airs! doesn't want to see her baby sister, don't she? Well, to tell the truth, I don't think you'll be much missed. Papa and Mamma are pretty well wrapped up in Miss Baby. She's a novelty, you know, and I guess she'll be taken care of, even if you don't trouble yourself."
I would not for worlds have let her see the passion of grief and rage which shook me. I went out of her sight, and fled, not to my own room, which opened from my mother's, but to a remote spare chamber, and there I bore my pain alone.
To cry would have infinitely relieved me, but my evil pride restrained me from that. They should not see my eyes red, and know how I felt; I would die first, I said, bitterly, to myself, I, who had cried out every sorrow of my life, hitherto, on my mother's tender bosom. After a while I heard them calling me,—
"Annie! Annie! Annie! Why, the child came in half an hour ago. Where is she?"
Then I knew I must go down. So I looked at myself in the glass, and saw a face which, indeed, no tears stained, but which was disfigured by pride and passion; and thinking to myself,—'No one will notice how I look, now,' I went to my mother's room.
"Come here, my darling," her gentle voice said, "come and look at baby."
Baby! Could she not say a fond word to me, after I had been away from home two weeks, without bringing in baby! I moved reluctantly toward her.