And so thinking she fell asleep.
The next morning happened to be rainy. Hoodie ate her breakfast in silence, and what she did not eat she quietly added to the contents of the pocket-handkerchief parcel. Martin noticed her fumbling at something, but thankful for the quiet state of the atmosphere—otherwise Hoodie's temper—thought it wiser to make no remarks. For after all it was a very April sort of sunshine; and two or three times before dinner there were signs of possible storms—once in particular, when the little boy had got Prince up into the nursery to play with them and Hoodie insisted on turning him out.
"Him's not to come in here," she said; "Hoodie won't have him in here no more."
"Really, Hoodie," said Maudie, "this isn't all your room. Why won't you let poor Prince come in? It was only yesterday you were crying because he wouldn't come."
"'Cos I loved him yesterday and I don't love him to-day," replied Hoodie coolly.
"And how would you like if people spoke that way to you?" said Maudie virtuously. "Suppose we said we wouldn't have you in the nursery 'cos we don't love you to-day?"
"Don't care," said Hoodie. "You can't send me out of the nursery. I'm not a dog. But if I like I can go of my own self," she added mysteriously. "And if peoples don't love me I sall go."
Maudie did not catch the sense of the last few words, but Prince, being in his own mind by no means partial to the nursery, where the children's affection expressed itself in clutches and caresses very unsettling to his nerves, had taken advantage of the discussion to go off "of his own self," and in the lamentation over his running away, no more was said, and it was not till afterwards that the elder girl remembered her little sister's threat.
But through dinner-time the hard, half-sullen look stayed on Hoodie's face, and again poor Martin shivered with fear that another storm was coming. Somewhat to her surprise things got no worse—not even when a message came up-stairs from "mother," that Maudie was to be ready to go out a drive with her at two, did Hoodie's rather curiously quiet manner desert her.
"I don't care. Nobody loves me," she repeated to herself, but so low that no one heard her.