“Oh, dear me! and now you’ll give up all your time to taking care of her, and coddling her up. How do you know but what she will go and do something just as bad when she gets well again?” cried Alexia.
“Ah, but I know she won’t, Alexia,” said Phronsie, shaking her head decidedly. “She’s awfully sorry and ashamed, and she’s been made almost sick by it.”
“So she ought to be,” cried Alexia wrathfully. “Now I know what Polly’s doing in town to-day, running about in the heat—she’s fixing up the trouble this girl made.”
“Alexia,” said Phronsie in a tone indicative of the deepest distress, and leaning forward to whisper the words, “I almost know that Grace’s mother never told her about what was right and wrong—I really believe she didn’t.”
“Well, supposing she didn’t; are you going to take other people’s children, and bring them up?” exclaimed Alexia. “Phronsie Pepper, I should think you’d enough on your hands with that Orphan Home down at Bedford, without any more young ones to look after!”
“And Grace has been away at boarding-school ever since she was six years old,” mourned Phronsie, without paying the slightest heed to Alexia; “dear, dear, just think of it, Alexia.”
“Well, I suppose I might as well talk to the wind,” exclaimed Alexia, “as to try to reason you and Polly against such a Quixotic scheme. Dear, dear, I can’t do anything with either of you.”
“No,” said Phronsie, “you can’t, Alexia. And now I want you to come up and see Grace—how nice she is. And you must tell her something lively to amuse her. Do, dear Alexia.”
She got off from the sofa, and put her arm around the tall, slim figure.
“Ugh!—no, I can’t.” Alexia edged off. “It’s bad enough for you to pet and coddle her; I’m going home.”