“No, indeed,” said Laura, smiling.
“You do, in the bottom of your heart; but you say you don’t to plague me, I know,” cried Bell, swelling with disappointed vanity. “It is pretty for all that, and it cost a great deal of money too, and nobody shall have any like it, if they cried their eyes out.”
Laura received this declaration in silence—Rosamond smiled; and at her smile the ill-suppressed rage of the spoiled child burst forth into the seventh and loudest fit of crying which had yet been heard on her birthday.
“What’s the matter, my pet?” cried her mother; “come to me, and tell me what’s the matter.” Bell ran roaring to her mother; but no otherwise explained the cause of her sorrow than by tearing the fine lace with frantic gestures from her cuffs, and throwing the fragments into her mother’s lap. “Oh! the lace, child!—are you mad?” said her mother, catching hold of both her hands. “Your beautiful lace, my dear love—do you know how much it cost?”
“I don’t care how much it cost—it is not beautiful, and I’ll have none of it,” replied Bell, sobbing; “for it is not beautiful.”
“But it is beautiful,” retorted her mother; “I chose the pattern myself. Who has put it into your head, child, to dislike it? Was it Nancy?”
“No, not Nancy, but them, mamma,” said Bell, pointing to Laura and Rosamond.
“Oh, fie! don’t point,” said her mother, putting down her stubborn finger; “nor say them, like Nancy; I am sure you misunderstood. Miss Laura, I am sure, did not mean any such thing.”
“No, madam; and I did not say any such thing, that I recollect,” said Laura, gently. “Oh, no, indeed!” cried Rosamond, warmly, rising in her sister’s defence.
No defence or explanation, however, was to be heard, for everybody had now gathered round Bell, to dry her tears, and to comfort her for the mischief she had done to her own cuffs. They succeeded so well, that in about a quarter of an hour the young lady’s eyes, and the reddened arches over her eyebrows came to their natural colour; and the business being thus happily hushed up, the mother, as a reward to her daughter for her good humour, begged that Rosamond would now be so good as to produce her “charming present.”