“I am not tired, not a bit,” returned Hatty touchily; “and I am going out with Ella.”
Bessie held her peace. Hatty’s temper had been very trying for the last three days; she had slaved for Bessie to the detriment of her health, but had worn an injured manner all the time.
She would not join in the conversation, nor understand a joking remark. When Christine laughed at her in a good-humored way, Hatty pursed up her lips, and drew herself up in a huffy manner, and would not condescend to speak a word. She even rejected Bessie’s caresses and little attempts at petting. “Don’t, Bessie. I must go on with my work; I wish you would leave me alone,” she would say pettishly.
Bessie did leave her alone, but it made her heart ache to see the lines under Hatty’s eyes, that showed she had cried herself to sleep. She knew it was unhappiness and not temper that was the cause of her irritability.
“She is ashamed of letting me know that she cannot bear me to go away,” she thought. “She is trying to get the better of her selfishness, but it conquers her. I will leave her alone for a little, and then I will have it all out. I could not go away and leave her like that.” For Bessie’s warm, affectionate nature could not endure the thought of Hatty’s pain.
“I have so much, and she has so little,” she said to herself, and her pity blunted all Hatty’s sharp, sarcastic little speeches and took the sting out of them. “Poor little thing! she does not mean half she says,” she remarked, as a sort of apology to Christine, when Hatty had marched off with Ella.
“I don’t know how you put up with her as you do,” observed Christine, whose patience had been sorely exercised that morning by Hatty’s tempers. “She is treating you as badly as possible. I would rather have been without her help, if I had been you; we might have had Miss Markham in for two days; that would have shamed Hatty nicely.”
“I don’t want to shame her, Chrissy, dear; poor little Hatty! when she has been working so beautifully, too. She is worrying herself about my going away, and that makes her cross.”
“As though no one else would miss you,” returned Christine stormily, for she was not quite devoid of jealousy. “But there, it is no use my talking; you will all treat Hatty as though she were a baby, and so she behaves like a spoiled child. I should like to give her a bit of my mind.” And Christine tossed her pretty head and swept off the last dress, while Bessie cleared the table.
Bessie’s visit was fixed for the following Tuesday, so on Sunday evening she made up her mind that the time was come for speaking to Hatty. As it happened, they were keeping house together, for the rest of the family, the servants included, had gone to church. Hatty had just settled herself in a corner of the couch, with a book in her hand, expecting that Bessie would follow her example (for the Lambert girls were all fond of reading), when a hand was suddenly interposed between her eyes and the page.