Magdalen hesitated.
"I don't know. Sometimes I think I have made an impression on her, and then it seems all to have gone off again. She is such a queer mixture—in some ways so old for her age, and in some ways such a baby."
"Yes," said Mrs. Caryll. "It is so very difficult to know how to treat her. But she is very fond of you, Magdalen, and I am so glad to see it. We really used to think it wasn't in her to be fond of any one."
"But I am sure it is in her," said Magdalen, "only—I hardly can say what I mean—if she could be made to believe that other people love her, that she could be of use to others—I think that would take away the sort of defiance and hardness one sees in her sometimes. It is so unlike a child. She is always imagining people don't care for her, and then she takes actual pleasure in being as naughty as she can be."
"Yes," said Hoodie's mother; "there really are days when she goes out of her way to be naughty, one might say,—when it is enough for Martin to tell her to do or not to do anything, for her to wish to do or not to do the opposite. Still she has been better lately, Magdalen, and it is all thanks to you."
"Poor little Hoodie!" said her cousin, "I wonder why it should be so very difficult for her to be good. But we must get ready now, must we not, Beatrice? And whatever I do I must not forget the cage, or any good I can ever hope to do Hoodie will be at an end!"
"But she is only to have it if she really has been good?" said Mrs. Caryll, who was sometimes afraid that Magdalen was rather inclined to spoil Hoodie.
"Only if she has been good, you may be sure," said Magdalen. "And there is one thing about Hoodie—she does keep a promise."
"You think she is honest and truthful?" said Mrs. Caryll.
"By nature I am sure she is. But her brain is so full of fancies that she hardly understands herself, that I can quite see how sometimes it must seem as if she were not straightforward. Not that the fancies would do her any harm if they were all happy and pretty ones—but I do wish she could get rid of the idea that no one cares for her. It is that that sours her and spoils her, poor little girl."