WHEN Geoffrey and Priscilla got back, they found Loveday seated at the dining-room table, with a newspaper spread before her, to protect the table-cloth, a glass of water and a piece of white rag beside her, and before her an old bound volume of Little Folks, already open at the picture she had selected to paint. Close at her hand lay a little screw of white paper containing her tooth. She was all in readiness to begin, and very impatient at what she considered their long delay.
“I do think you might have hurried,” she said, in an injured tone, “when you knew that I was not at all well.”
“What is the matter? You are all right now the tooth is out,” said Geoffrey teasingly.
“No, I am not. Look at the great hole between my teefs; it’s ’normous! I can put all my tongue in, nearly.”
“Well, don’t put any paint in, or you might die,” said Priscilla. “Loveday, dear, don’t you think I had better paint for you, while you look on?”
“No, I don’t,” said Loveday, who usually said exactly what she thought. “Geoffrey has got ‘sans poison’ paints, and I’ve got a piece of rag to wipe my brushes on, and I am waiting to begin.”
“Well, I think you are very greedy,” said Priscilla rather unjustly.
“No, I am not, I’ve been ill,” explained Loveday, looking up with a grave face and wide blue eyes full of reproach; “and when peoples are ill they are ’lowed to do what they like.”
“I don’t think you are ill. I think you are only greedy. I don’t call having just one tooth out being ill; but you make so much fuss about everything.”
“You don’t know how much it hurt me,” said Loveday, returning quite calmly to the mixing of her paints, her short golden curls falling all about her little flushed face. “It was—oh, it was somefin’ dreadful!”