"Well, I never heard of such selfish, stingy meanness as this. It's raining hard, and you'd let me go out and get my feet sopping wet rather than lend me your new rubbers."
"Why don't you wear your own old ones?"
"Because they leak."
"They've leaked ever since I got this new pair!" retorted Ally, scornfully. "But it isn't these rubbers only; you're always borrowing my things. There's my blue jacket; you've worn it till the edge is threadbare, and you've worn my brown hat until it looks as shabby—and—there! you've got my silver bangle on now! You're no better than a thief, Florence Fleming!"
"A thief! that's a nice pretty thing to say to me! I should like to know who buys your things for you? Isn't it my father and Uncle John? I should like to know where you'd be, Alice Fleming, if it wasn't for Uncle John and father. Here, take your old bangle and keep it, and everything else that you've got. I never want to see anything of yours again; and I'm glad you're going off to Boston to Uncle John's for the rest of the winter, and I wish you'd stay there and never come back here,—I do!"
"I wish so too. Nobody in Uncle John's family would ever be so mean as to fling it in my face that I was a poor little beggar of an orphan."
"Uncle John's family! Uncle John's wife said the last time she was here that she dreaded the winter on your account,—there!"
"Aunt Kate—said that?"
"Yes, she did; I heard her."
A strange look came into Ally's eyes, and all the pretty color faded from her cheeks, as she cried out in a hoarse, passionate voice,—