"Will you help me, Maria?"
"Help make her bed and sweep her room?"
"Yes, and get her a cup of tea sometimes, and a clean supper."
"A clean supper!" exclaimed Maria. "Well! Yes, I guess I'll help you, when I have nothing of my own to do. When the dinner gets itself, and the house stays swept and dusted, and Aunt Candy lives without cakes for breakfast."
Matilda was silent.
"But I'll tell you what, Matilda," said her sister, "Aunt Candy will never let you do this sort of work. You may as well give it up peaceably, and not worry yourself nor anybody else. She'll never let you go into Lilac Lane—not to speak of getting dirty people's dinners. You may as well quit it."
"Don't tell her, Maria."
"You'll tell her yourself, first thing," said Maria, scornfully.
Matilda had to go up-stairs soon to her reading in her aunt's room. It was even more unintelligible, the reading, this time than before; because Matilda's head was running so busily on something else.
"You do not read well, child," said her aunt.