'Is that all!' she said. 'Oh, what a fright you gave me! Is it only something I have done without knowing it? You ridiculous, silly boy! Why can't you tell me plainly what it is, without all this nonsense? You know it is nonsense,' Norah continued, warming as she went on. 'What can I have done? Besides, however disagreeable I might have been, what right have you to mind? Nobody else minds. I am not a slave, never to be allowed to make myself unpleasant. There! I will be disagreeable if I like! I am not to be always bound to do what is pleasant to you.'
'If you take me up in this spirit, Norah——'
'Yes, I mean to take you up in this spirit. You have no right to feel everything like a ridiculous sensitive plant. Why should you? If I were a sensitive plant I might have some cause. I am little, I am friendless, I am very poor; I have nothing in the world but mamma. But for you to set up to have feelings, Ned! you, a boy! that can go where you like, and do what you like, and have heaps of money, and everybody bowing down before you! It is because you have nothing really to vex you, that you are obliged to invent things. Oh, you wicked, ungrateful boy, to pretend that you are unhappy! Look at Mr Stephen, and look at mamma!'
'But, Norah,' said Ned hurriedly; 'Norah dear! listen to me only one moment.'
'You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' she said. 'I won't listen to you. I have plenty of things to bother me, and you have nothing. You never had to think whether you could spend this or that—whether you could have a new coat, or go a journey, or anything; and you go and make troubles because you have not got any.' Here she made a pause, turning her head away, so that poor Ned was more miserable than ever. And then all at once she turned and looked up kindly at him. 'What was it I did, Ned?'
This sudden revolution overwhelmed him altogether. He felt the water leap to his eyes. He was so young. And then he laughed unsteadily.
'What a girl you are, Norah!' he said.
'Was I cross last night? What did I do? I didn't mean it, I am sure. I came over quite innocently, never thinking Katie was bringing me to be scolded. It was not friendly of Katie. She ought to have told me. But, Ned, what was it? Tell me what I did.'
'Norah, things must not go on like this. I cannot do it. It may be as much as my life is worth,' said the youth. 'Look at those two over there; they may quarrel sometimes——'
'They quarrel every day of their lives,' said Norah, breathless, in a parenthesis.