Magdalen glanced at Mrs. Caryll.
"May I take my own way with her!" her glance seemed to say. Mrs. Caryll nodded her head, and notwithstanding Martin's whispered warning, "Oh, Miss King, you don't know what a work you'll have with her," Magdalen turned to Hoodie, and before the child in the least understood what she was about, she had picked her up in her strong young arms and was half way down the passage before Hoodie's surprise had given her breath to begin her roars again.
She was opening her mouth to do so, when her cousin stopped for a moment.
"Now, Hoodie," she said, "listen. It was kind of you to want to get me a quite fresh egg for my breakfast, but it isn't kind of you at all to make that disagreeable noise, and to kick and fight so because I want to take you to my room."
"I don't care," said Hoodie, "I don't like zou, and I will cry if I like. I don't like any people."
"I am very sorry to find you are so silly," said Cousin Magdalen. "If you were older and understood better you would not talk like that."
"I would if I liked," persisted Hoodie. "Big peoples can do whatever zey likes, and if I was big I could too."
"Big people can't do whatever they like," said Miss King, "and nice big people never like to do things that other people don't like too."
"Don't zey?" said Hoodie, meditatively. By this time they were safely shut into Miss King's room and Hoodie was plumped down into the middle of her cousin's bed—"Don't zey? Zen I don't want to be a nice big people. I want to be the kind that does whatever zey likes zerselves."
Miss King gave a slight sigh—half of amusement, half of despair. She was beginning to understand that Hoodie's reformation was indeed no easy matter.