“Impolite?” said William with some indignation. “I’m not tryin’ to be polite! I’m bein’ truthful. I can’t be everything. Seems to me I’m the only person in the world what is truthful an’ no one seems to be grateful to me. It isn’t ’s fat as what she is,” he went on doggedly, “an’ it’s not got as many little lines on its face as what she has an’ it’s different lookin’ altogether. It looks pretty an’ she doesn’t——”
Lady Atkinson towered over him, quivering with rage.
“You nasty little boy!” she said thrusting her face close to his. “You—NASTY—little—boy!”
Then she swept out of the room without another word.
The front door slammed.
She was gone.
Aunt Emma sat down and began to weep.
“She’ll never come to the house again,” she said.
“I always said he ought to be hung,” said Robert gloomily. “Every day we let him live he complicates our lives still worse.”
“I shall tell your father, William,” said Mrs. Brown, “directly we get home.”