“I am sure I wish she was!” cried Mrs. Eastwood, “she deserves to be, venturing to dictate to me, the little vulgar intruder, a girl not fit to be in the same room with Nelly and you!”
“Little!” said Innocent, with an amused smile. “She is not little. She is the biggest of all. Are you very angry? Did she scold you?”
“I am very angry; but don’t you mind, my dear. Never think again of what she said, Innocent. She is a passionate, selfish fool; don’t pay any attention to what she said.”
“No,” said docile Innocent; “but I should like to be of use—it would be pleasant to be of use,” she added, after a pause. “Let me do something. What is a companion? How strange that she should be so red and so breathless? Is it all about me?”
“It is because she is a fool,” said Mrs. Eastwood, though, indeed, she herself was flushed and excited too.
“But what is a companion?” asked Innocent.
“You are my companion and Nelly’s,” said Mrs. Eastwood; “my dear, don’t think of it any more.”
“And she is Frederick’s,” said Innocent, contemplating with a strange abstract spectatorship the group on the sofa. There was no enmity, only a wondering contemplation in her eyes. “Can he never be without her? Will she stay with him for ever and ever?”
“As long as she lives,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a profound sigh.