“Ah, well,” sighed the Blue Lady, “I really will try to be more tolerant, but the woman irritates me beyond endurance.”
She ran upstairs to the sitting-room:
“Oh the wild joys of living,” she quoted, “the leaping from rock to——”
Her good resolutions were forgotten, for there, curled up on the sofa, sat Annabel. She was not an attractive child in appearance: she was too tall for her age, and, in spite of the fact that she was five years old, she spoke in a babyish manner which sounded unnatural and was, indeed, the result of affectation.
She was the first to speak. “Miss Magalet, ’tan I have dinner wiv ’oo?”
“No, Annabel, you most certainly can not. Why don’t you speak plainly—Tommy does. And you must never again come up here when we are not in.”
“You have much nicer dinners than us,” continued the child; “me never has g’evy and meat, only beans and fings.”
“Poor mite!” said the Brown Lady below her breath.
Annabel had wriggled off the sofa and was pointing to a gay chocolate box on the mahogany wash-stand that served as a sideboard. “’S dem for Tommy?” she asked.