“No, indeed, Ninny, I was very patient,” replied Mary with pride. “But for all that I had to punish her!”
Mrs. Gray turned her head on her pillow, and looked at Mary in astonishment.
“Did you think I gave you authority to punish your little sister? That would have been strange indeed! I merely said she and Philip were to obey you during the afternoon.”
Mary felt a sudden sense of humiliation, all the more as Julia had suspended the hairbrush, and was looking down on her derisively—or so she fancied.
“Why, mamma, I must have misunderstood you. I thought it was the same as if I was Julia, you know.”
“Julia is eighteen years old, my child. You are twelve. But what had Ethel done that was wrong?”
Then Mary told of the quarrel with Kittyleen, and the notes which had passed between the two little girls. Though naturally given to exaggeration, she had been so carefully trained in this regard that her word could usually be taken now without “a grain of salt.”
Mrs. Gray looked relieved and amused.
“So that was the way you punished your little sister? I was half afraid you had been shutting her up in the closet, or possibly snipping her fingers, either of which things, my child, I should not allow.”