Hope couldn't tell Kate how satisfactorily,—couldn't tell her that if Miss Stephens had been sure that everything was right at an earlier hour and Dorothea had thus been hindered from doing what she did, she would also have missed that mortifying experience, that might do more to shake her unlimited confidence in her own estimates and opinions than anything else could possibly do.
No, Hope couldn't tell Kate of this, for her lips were sealed. But if she could not express herself freely in this direction, she could, and she would, say something to show Dorothea as she had just seen her,—at her best; and so she held forth, with what amplitude was possible within the limit of her promise, on the girl's surprising gentleness and reasonableness. Dorothea had really behaved exceedingly well, she told Kate, and was not only appreciative of what had been done for her, but of the good intention that prompted the doing. And here Hope could not help repeating this characteristic speech of Dorothea's,—
"I don't half believe, and I never have, that such dreadful consequences would come of going against Miss Marr's rules; but you do, I see, and so it was awfully kind of you to take all this trouble to pull me out of the danger you thought I was in."
"She said that? Well, I must say, she's got more sense and feeling than I gave her credit for; and to think of her flying at me as she did. My intentions were as good as yours."
"Yes, but you gave her advice, and she hates advice. What seemed to impress her was our—Mrs. Sibley and my—taking the trouble to leave the Park, and actually going in to the matinée and waiting to do her the service we did."
"Well, I hope her gratitude and appreciation will last long enough to keep her out of any more silly scrapes for a while."
"I don't believe she will want to get into any more such scrapes. I—I think she feels sort of ashamed of what she has done. And, Kate, couldn't we—wouldn't it be a good plan if we tried to help her to keep out of such things?"
"Help her—how?"
"Well, I—I feel as if I may have been too hard on her. I have cherished my feeling of dislike constantly, and have done her an injury all round—with you, and the other girls by the way I have held off from her. She feels that the girls don't like her, and thinks that you were the first to dislike her, and that it was you who had influenced me. I told her what a mistake that was,—that it was I who had influenced you—by my manner at the start; and then, then I recalled myself to her mind. I told her what she had forgotten,—that I was the little girl she had met five years ago,—the little girl she had had a quarrel with at the Brookside station, and that I had always remembered what she had said to me there,—always remembered and resented it, and that it was that that had affected my manner towards her, had made me stiff and offish to her."
"Oh, Hope, do, do tell me about that time! I've never liked before to urge you to tell me the whole story, but I wish now that you would tell me."