"How, horrid?"
"Why, she is wicked, and she don't know anything. She would hardly listen to Marmaduke when, he wanted to talk to her."
"Has she got a Bible, I wonder?" said Daisy in an awestruck voice.
"She? She can't read. She don't know anything; and she is as ugly and cross as she can be."
"Was she cross to Mr. Dinwiddie?"
"Yes, indeed. He said he never saw such a crabbed old thing. O she's horrid. I don't like to ride by that way."
The children were called in to dinner, and kept in the house by Mrs. Sandford during the intensest heat of the day. But when the afternoon was cooling off, or at least growing less oppressive, the two children again sought the shade under the walnut tree, where the gurgle of the water over the stones, and the company of the squirrels in the tree, made the place pleasant. And there they sat down in a great state of mutual contentment. Nora's feet were swinging about for very jollity. But Daisy sat still. Perhaps she was tired. Nevertheless it could not be that which made her little face by and by take on it as profound an expression as if she had been looking over all Methuselah's years.
"Nora—" said Daisy, and stopped.
"What?" said Nora, kicking her heels.
"You know that poor old crippled woman—what did you call her?"