So she curled herself up on the lower of the two seats, with the rug all over her except her head. She was only to pull it right up when she heard any of them coming. But at one moment she thought she heard the handle of the door being turned, and then she thought she heard voices and footsteps coming out; and she had so many false alarms and grew so nervous that at last she snuggled right down under the rug and stayed there, and then she forgot to listen, and somehow, instead of being in the carriage she was in the giant’s oven, and oh, it was so hot there she felt she was being suffocated, when suddenly the oven door was opened, and such beautiful cool air rushed in, and—
“Why, what has the child wrapped herself up like this for?” exclaimed a voice; “she must be trying to cook herself, I think.”
“Perhaps she is afraid of getting a cold where her tooth came out,” said another voice, which was Prissy’s. Loveday roused herself, and sat up and stretched; she was very hot and tumbled, and rosy and she could not remember for a moment what had happened. Then out came a woman with a crying baby in her arms. Loveday recognised Mrs. Rouse, and wanted to be under the rug again.
“There, missie! He’s laughing the other side of his face now,” she said, smiling good-temperedly up at Loveday, and holding out the sobbing baby for her to see.
“I don’t think he is at all pretty, whichever side he smiles,” said Loveday very crossly, and without a ghost of a smile on her own face. She knew she was rude and unkind, but she felt at that moment that she wanted to say something nasty, and she said it. Priscilla was shocked, and her father was vexed with her, but Mrs. Rouse only laughed good-temperedly.
“It was your pa that made him to. You must ask him to learn you how to laugh the other side of your face.”
“I don’t want to know, thank you,” said Loveday shortly. “Prissy, will you pin up my shawl, please? If I talk any more I shall catch a cold in my mouth.”
Priscilla got up, and, kneeling on the seat beside her little sister, arranged the shawl very carefully about her.
“I wouldn’t speak like that if I were you, dear,” she said gently; “Mrs. Rouse is such a nice, kind woman, and she doesn’t understand that you don’t like her—her joking.” Loveday jerked away her head quite crossly, but Priscilla went on. “If you laugh and don’t take any notice, they won’t think anything about it; but if you look so cross and say nasty rude things, they will talk ever so much about it.”
Loveday saw the sense of this, and it seemed so dreadful that she forced herself to be less disagreeable, and to look at some of the other babies, and even to smile at some of the mothers, but she could not forgive Mrs. Rouse quite yet.