“Miss Ella, for shame. What a little fury you are. How can I say what you’ll be? You should be a grand, rich young lady if I was your sister, but I can’t speak for others.”
“What do you mean?” cried Ella. “Mamma will let me be a grand young lady. Maddie and Ermie aren’t over mamma. Harvey, do you hear?”
“Hush,” said the nurse, suddenly changing her tone, “your mamma’s very ill, Miss Ella, and if you make such a noise they’ll all think you very naughty. I was only joking—of course you’ll be a beautiful young lady too, some day.”
But Ella was not to be so easily smoothed down.
“You weren’t joking,” she said resentfully. “I’ll ask Maddie if it’s true,” and she began to scramble down. “I’ll take the book and tell her you said it was like me and them.”
Harvey caught hold of her.
“If you do, Miss Ella,” she said, “you’ll get such a scolding as you’ve never had in your life. And I’ll be sent away—you’ll see—and it’ll be all your fault.” Ella stopped short.
“Then why did you say it to me?” she asked, for she was a clever and quick-witted child.
“Oh, well—I shouldn’t have said it. When you’re older you’ll understand better, darling. You see Harvey loves you so—she’d like you to be the eldest and have everything like a little princess. The third’s never the same—and Harvey doesn’t like to think of her Miss Ella coming in for the old clothes and the leavings, and the worst of it all, so to say.”
Ella had calmed down now, but she sat listening intently with a startled, uneasy look, painful to see on her pretty little face.