Quintin came forward from behind the curtains to answer for himself.
“Well, and if I did, I’d like to know who bit and scratched and kicked?” he exclaimed, wrathfully.
“’Cos you said you’d tell I was hiding in the curtains; tell-tale boy,” returned Floss, with supreme contempt.
“And why were you hiding in the curtains? Why didn’t you go up to bed when I sent you?” demanded her mother.
“Quin said there was a bear behind the glass door in the hall, and I was fwightened it would eat me,” replied Floss, her defiance subsiding.
“I only said bears eat naughty children. It says so in the Bible,” said Quin, virtuously.
Adelaide began to laugh.
“How silly you are!” thought Roma, regretfully. “I fear Beauchamp will soon be bored by you.” But she liked the girl better when she rose from her seat, and asked Gertrude if she might not convoy poor Floss across the dreaded hall. It was more than Roma would have troubled herself to do: she looked upon all children as necessary evils, and considered her niece a peculiarly aggravated form of the infliction.
Gertrude was profuse in her thanks, but Floss hung back.
“I don’t like you,” she said calmly, looking up into Miss Chancellor’s face. “You’re too fat, and you’ve got stawey eyes.”