“What of Dolff? It must be delightful for a stranger to hear what we think of each other.”
“What do you mean by calling her Miss Summerhayes and a stranger, when you know it was settled she was to be like one of ourselves—and by far the best of us?” cried Julia, with flushed cheeks and blazing eyes.
“Miss Summerhayes,” said Gussy, turning again upon Janet, with a wave of her hand towards the indignant Julia, “I think your pupil is not doing you much credit to-day.”
Janet had more command of herself in the family squabble than she had in the previous question.
“Julia has forgotten herself,” she said. “She will be very sorry for it by-and-bye. I hope you will forgive her. She cannot quite get over her quick temper all at once.”
“I hope she won’t wear out our patience altogether before she does so,” Gussy said, with significant calm.
“Janet! she means she’ll persuade my mother to send me to school. Mamma would never do it of her own will. But if Gussy goes on nagging and nagging—— But I’ll not go. I’ll run away. I am too old to be packed off like a child. I’ll——”
“It would do you a great deal of good, Julia, to go to school,” said Janet, sedately.
“I have always said so,” said Gussy, “and it’s very good of you, Janet, to back me up. I have a temper, perhaps, too, and I say what I don’t mean when I’m angry. But please don’t think that I have ever changed about you. I liked you from the first, and I shall always like you. That little vixen makes one say things—but I know that we owe a great deal to you.”
“Oh, no,” cried Janet, with a compunction in her heart.