His mother exclaimed, “How primitive—George, my darling, don’t spit on things.”
“’Pittin’s easy,” he said, and he started to polish me off again, when his father interfered, and promising him the pleasure of properly washing some of the colour off the next day, sent him back to bed.
As he climbed upstairs, holding tight to Ellen’s hand, I heard a gentle noise such as a cat might make, and leaning my head over the settle, saw Amarilla toddling toward me.
What a little skeleton!—I was terribly shocked.
“Poor girlie,” said mistress, “now you will get fat,” and she lifted her up beside me.
Amarilla never said a word. She gave me a perfectly heart-rending glance from her big frightened eyes, and cuddled up close to me. She lay there till they carried me up to master’s room, when she followed behind like a little mourner.
“Amarilla!” called mistress later on, when I had been placed on my own bed which was a big French bergère in master’s dressing-room, “aren’t you coming to sleep in my room?”
I heard a little stirring beside my chair, but she did not go to mistress.
“Claudia,” said master, “I advise you to leave her in the same room with Boy for a day or two. She has had a great fright about him. She will go back to you later.”