"Oh, children, how can you talk so?" cried Patty, all her half-formed resolutions of keeping silence and not letting the others know how she felt about it flying to the winds. "Do you really want a stepmother to come in and scold and interfere and spoil all our comfort? Do you want some one else to tell you what to do, and make you mind, instead of me? You're too little to know about such things, but I know what stepmothers are. I read about them in a book once, and they're dreadful creatures, and always hate the children, and try to make their Papas hate them too. It will be awful to have one, I think."
Patty was absolutely crying as she finished this outburst; and, emotion being contagious, the little ones began to cry also.
"Why does Papa want to marry her, if she's so horrid?" sobbed Agnes.
"I'll never love her!" declared Susy.
"And I'll set my wooden dog on her!" added Hal.
"Oh, Hal," protested Patty, alarmed at the effect of her own injudicious explosion, "don't talk like that! We mustn't be rude to her. Papa wouldn't like it. Of course, we needn't love her, or tell her things, or call her 'mother,' but we must be polite to her."
"I don't know what you mean exactly, but I'm not going to be it, anyway," said Agnes.
And, indeed, Patty's notion of a politeness which was to include neither liking nor confidence nor respect was rather a difficult one to comprehend.
None of the children went to the wedding, which was a very quiet one. Patty declared that she was glad; but in her heart I think she regretted the loss of the excitement, and the opportunity for criticism. A big loaf of thickly frosted sponge cake arrived for the children, with some bon-bons, and a kind little note from the bride; and these offerings might easily have placated the younger ones, had not Patty diligently fanned the embers of discontent and kept them from dying out.
And all the time she had no idea that she was doing wrong. She felt ill-treated and injured, and her imagination played all sorts of unhappy tricks. She made pictures of the future, in which she saw herself neglected and unloved, her little sisters and brother ill-treated, her father estranged, and the household under the rule of an enemy, unscrupulous, selfish, and cruel. Over these purely imaginary pictures she shed many needless tears.