“Airy once slapped Bethany,” she remarked, meditatively.
The Judge made no reply. Evidently the two girls were not affinities.
“Annie never slapped Bethany,” the child presently remarked.
Annie, the Judge knew, was Mrs. Tingsby’s second daughter. However, once more he did not feel called upon to give an expression of opinion, and Bethany went on: “To-night week I shall go to the country with Ellen and Susie.”
The Judge rang the bell. “Jennie,” he said, when the parlor maid appeared, “here is a little girl that wants to go to bed.”
Bethany got up sweetly. She kissed Sukey good-night, then she went to the Judge and threw her arms round his neck. “Good-night, dear Daddy Grandpa.”
“Good-night, my child,” he responded, and as he spoke he felt how dear indeed the little affectionate, jealous creature had become to him.
She seemed to part from him with reluctance. However, she took Jennie’s hand agreeably enough, but in the doorway she turned and fired a parting shot that immensely amused the unfortunate man attacked.
“Daddy Grandpa,” she said, sternly, “ladies is born, not made,” then she disappeared with Jennie.
The Judge sat down in his big chair, alone at last with what remnant of calm these children had left him. Which was the more remarkable, Bethany or Airy? Bethany with her queer, old-fashioned, precocious, yet strangely childlike ways, or the bitter, repellent Airy?