Martin began some apologies, but Miss King stopped her.
"Never mind, Martin," she said. "It really doesn't matter. She will get to know me better in a little."
But all the same, Cousin Magdalen, being, though very amiable and sensible, only human, did feel hurt by the little girl's rude repulse. It is never pleasant to be repulsed by any one; it is, I think, to even right-feeling people, particularly hurting to be repulsed by a child. And then Magdalen had been thinking a great deal about this poor little Hoodie that nobody seemed able to manage, and planning to herself various little ways by which she hoped to win her confidence, and thus perhaps be of real service to the child, and through her to her mother.
"And now," she said to herself, "she has evidently taken a prejudice to me at first sight. What a pity! Yet," she added, as she brushed out and arranged the long thick brown hair which Hoodie had objected to, "she is only a baby. Perhaps she will like me better when my hair is fastened up. I must try her again."
The other three children had stayed in their cousin's room—Martin having flown after Hoodie, whom she was now afraid to trust for a moment out of her sight—and while she finished dressing they chattered away in their own fashion.
"Poor mamma's dot one headache zis morning," said Hec.
"Yes," said Duke, "papa comed to the nursley to say Hoodie wasn't to go to be talkened to, 'cos it would make poor mamma's headache worser."
"Won't nobody talken to Hoodie zen?" said Hec.
"Don't be silly, Hec dear," said Maudie, "of course mamma mustn't talk to her when her head's bad. Papa said to Martin that she must not let Hoodie out of her sight, but that he couldn't have mamma bothered about it any more, and that it would be better to drop the subject. What does it mean to 'drop the subject,' Cousin Magdalen? I thought perhaps it meant to put down the lowest bar on the gate at the end of the garden, where Hoodie sometimes creeps through to the cocky field. Could it be that?"
"No," said Magdalen, turning away so as to hide her face, "it just means not to say any more about Hoodie's running away yesterday, because it has troubled your mother so much."