"No, it hasn't."
"I mean—anything horrid?"
Her voice sounded such genuine distress that he dropped his hostile and contemptuous tone.
"No," he said, "why should it?"
"Because I've noticed that, when people are unusually horrid, it always means that something horrid's happened to them."
"Really?"
"Papa, for instance, is only horrid to us because Mummy—my stepmother, you know—was horrid to him."
"What did Mummy do to him?"
"She ran away from him. It's always that way. People aren't horrid on purpose. At least I'm sure you wouldn't be."
"Was I horrid?"