"My thoughts are nice ones," said Phronsie slowly, "because they are about nice people."
"Ah!"
"And they won't tell themselves. And I ought not to make them. They would fly away then, and I should never find them again, when I wanted to think them."
"Your mother brought you up well, I must say," observed Mrs. Chatterton, deliberately drawing up a chair and putting her long figure within it, "to talk in this style to a lady as old as I am."
Phronsie allowed one foot to gently trace the pattern on the carpet before she answered. "I know you are very old," she said at last, "but I cannot tell my thoughts to you."
"Very old!" cried Mrs. Chatterton, her chin in the air. "Indeed! well, I am not, I would have you know, Miss Phronsie," and she played with the silk cord of her satin wrapper. "I hate a child that is made a prig!" she added explosively under her breath.
Phronsie made no reply, being already deep in her own calculations once more.
"Now, Phronsie," said Mrs. Chatterton, suddenly drawing herself out of her angry fit, and clearing her brow, "I want you to give your attention to me a moment, for I have something I must say to you. That's why I came in here, to find you alone. Come, look at me, child. It isn't polite to be staring at the carpet all the time."
Phronsie, thus admonished, took her gaze from the floor, to bestow it on the face above her.
"It's something that nobody is to know but just you and me," began Mrs.
Chatterton, with a cautious glance at the door.