Her mother took the bunch of flowers out of her hand and looked at it. “Yes,” she said, “that’s where the dark-red campion grows.”
She was holding the flowers up to her face. It was awful, for you could see her mouth thicken and redden over its edges and shake. She hid it behind the flowers. And somehow you knew it wasn’t your naughtiness that made her cry. There was something more.
She was saying in a thick, soft voice, “It was wrong of you, my darling.”
Suddenly she bent her tall straightness. “Rose campion,” she said, parting the stems with her long, thin fingers. “Look, Hatty, how beautiful they are. Run away and put the poor things in water.”
She was so quiet, so quiet, and her quietness hurt far more than if she had been angry.
She must have gone straight back into the house to Papa. Harriett knew, because he sent for her. He was quiet, too.... That was the little, hiding voice he told you secrets in.... She stood close up to him, between his knees, and his arm went loosely round her to keep her there while he looked into her eyes. You could smell tobacco, and the queer, clean man’s smell that came up out of him from his collar. He wasn’t smiling; but somehow his eyes looked kinder than if they had smiled.
“Why did you do it, Hatty?”
“Because—I wanted to see what it would feel like.”
“You mustn’t do it again. Do you hear?—you mustn’t do it.”
“Why?”