“Please, Miss Phipps,” said Pixie hoarsely, “I was doing nothing. I was only after putting in the hot bottle!”
Miss Phipps stared, Mademoiselle gave a sharp exclamation of surprise, and turned impetuously to her Principal.
“The ’ot bottle! It is true. I ’ave one every night, but I thought that Ellen—that one of the maids—”
“We have put no hot bottle in your bed, Mademoiselle. It is Miss Emily’s rule that any of the young ladies may have bottles of their own, if they take the trouble to fill them in the bathroom as they go to bed, and to put them back there in the morning. We never put one in a bed unless in the case of illness,” said Ellen, who stood in a corner of the room, one of the most anxious and interested of the spectators; and at that Miss Phipps turned once more to Pixie.
“Then are we to understand that it was your own bottle of which you are talking? And what made you think of lending it to Mademoiselle?”
“She told me that she was always cold,” said Pixie faintly. “I didn’t like to think of her lying there shivering. Bridgie gave me the bottle when I came away in a little red flannel cover. ‘You’re such a frog!’ says she, ‘maybe this will warm you,’ but I just roll my feet in my nightgown and hug them in my hands until they are warm. I thought perhaps Mademoiselle couldn’t do that. Ye can’t bend so easy when you’re old, so she needed the bottle most.”
“Ma petite!” cried Mademoiselle. “Ma chérie!”—and she would have rushed forward and taken Pixie into her arms straight away, had not Miss Phipps held her back with a restraining touch.