"Because you pushed it away, Rosy. You're always saying you're not good and you don't care. But I think you do care, only," with a sigh, "I know one has to try a great, great lot."
"Yes, and I don't like the bother," said Rosy, coolly.
"There, now you've said it," said Bee. "Then that shows it isn't that you can't be good but you don't like to have to try so much. But please, Rosy, don't say you'll leave off. Do go on. It will get easier. I know it will. It's like skipping and learning to play on the piano and lots of things. Every time we try makes it a little easier for the next time."
"I never thought of that," said Rosy, with interest in her tone. "Well, I'll think about it any way, and I'll tell you in the morning what I've settled. Perhaps I'll fix just to be naughty again to-morrow, for a rest you know. How would it do, I wonder, if I was to be good and naughty in turns? I could settle the days, and then the naughty ones you could keep out of my way."
"It wouldn't do at all," said Bee, decidedly. "It would be like going up two steps and then tumbling back two steps. No, it would be worse, it would be like going up two and tumbling back three, for every naughty day would make it still harder to begin again on the good day."
"Well, I won't do that way, then," said Rosy, with wonderful gentleness. "I'll either go on trying to climb up the steps—how funnily you say things, Bee!—or I'll not try at all. I'll tell you to-morrow morning. But remember you're not to tell anybody. If I fix to be good I want everybody to be surprised."
"But you won't get good all of a sudden, Rosy," said Bee, feeling afraid that Rosy would again lose heart at the first break-down.
"Well, I daresay I won't," returned Rosy. "But don't you see if nobody but you knows it won't so much matter. But if I was to tell everybody then it would all seem pretending, and there's nothing so horrid as pretending."
There was some sense in Rosy's ideas, and Bee did not go against them. She went back to her own bed with a curious feeling of respect for Rosy and a warm feeling of affection also.
"And it was very horrid of me to be thinking of her that way to-night," said honest Bee to herself. "I'll never think of her that way again. Poor Rosy, she has had no mother all these years that I've had my mother doing nothing but trying to make me good. But I am so glad Rosy is getting to like me."