"Why, to make them clean and shining. You and I are going to clear up the house and make it look ever so nice for mother when she wakes up."
"Did you come home to help mother?"
"Yes, indeed. And you two little sisters must show me how to help her; poor sick mother! I am afraid she has too much to do."
"She cries," said Susie gravely, as though she were stating not a surprising but simply a settled fact; "she cried every day: not out loud like Sate and me, but softly. Father says she is always sniveling."
If you had been watching Nettie Decker just then you would have noticed that the blood flamed into her cheeks, and her eyes had a flash of wonder, and terror, and anger in them. What did it all mean? Where had the children learned such words? Was it possible that her father talked in this way to his wife?
"Hush!" she said unguardedly, "you must not talk so." But this made the fierce little Susie stamp her foot.
"I shall talk so!" she said angrily; "I shall talk just what I please, and you sha'n't stop me." And then the queer little mimic beside her stamped her foot, and said, "You sha'n't stop me."
Said Nettie, "There was a little girl on the cars to-day that I knew. She had a little gray kitty with three white feet, and a white spot on one ear, and it had a blue ribbon around its neck. What if you had such a kitty. Would you be real good to it?"
"I will have a black kitty," said Susie, "all black; as black as that stove." Nettie glancing at the stove, could not help thinking that it was more gray than black; but she kept her thoughts to herself, and Susie went on. "And it should have a red ribbon around its neck; as red as Janie Martin's dress; her dress is as red as fire, and has ruffles on, and ribbons. But what would it eat?"
She did not mean the dress but the kitten.