Hope was seized with one of her fits of impatience. Why would Adelaide be so stupid?
“Shan’t we tease her!” exclaimed Victoria, triumphantly. “Fred says he won’t learn his lessons to a woman, and I won’t learn any lessons at all, if I can help it, and mamma won’t let me if I have a head-ache. Do you ever have any head-aches, Hope?”
“No,” said Hope, stoutly, “head-aches! Miss Mansfield used to have them at school—you mind, Adelaide? but it’s a great shame, and Miss Swinton says girls have no right to have head-aches.”
“Oh, Hope! ‘you mind.’ Mamma would whip me if I said ‘you mind.’”
“My mother would not,” said the resolute Hope, “and mind is a far better word than remember or recollect. It’s only one syllable, and—it’s our own tongue, and it’s a very good word.”
“I think so too,” said Adelaide, with an unwonted exertion, “because when a word’s short it’s easier said.”
Adelaide’s sentence terminated abruptly in a peal of malicious laughter from Victoria.
“Well,” said the elder sister, with some faint flush of anger, “I am sure Miss Swinton used to say so—and you’ve no right to laugh, Victoria—I’ll tell mamma.”
“I don’t care,” was the response; “mamma is not so well pleased when you always talk about that stupid governess—you know that.”
“Stupid governess!” Hope’s eyes sparkled. “If you were not a child, Victoria,” she said, with the dignity of a senior, “you would not speak so. Miss Swinton is a lady—Miss Swinton is a gentlewoman! I don’t know any one like Miss Swinton, except mamma, and—”