Elsie looked as if she were enjoying the sensation she had made. "I've got a good reason," she said, nodding her head knowingly. "You'll see it when you've read the letter. I always thought I wasn't so very fond of her, and now I see why it was. It wouldn't have been right if I had; an' when she beat me, I can't tell you how I felt. I couldn't like any one who beat me!" Elsie continued, grinding her teeth together with rage at the memory, "even if it was my own mother."
"You seemed as if you wanted to make mother do it," said Duncan, who was often much distracted between his allegiance to rebellious Elsie and the strict sense of duty and obedience in which he had always been trained.
"P'raps I did," Elsie replied. "But I don't care; and mother shan't have the chance again. I don't think our father'd let her if he knew it."
"Our father?" faltered Duncan. "Why, our father's dead."
"Is he?" asked Elsie, enigmatically. "Robbie's father is."
"And isn't that ours?" Duncan asked contemptuously.
"That's just it," Elsie replied, with some excitement. "That's just what the letter's about. Now, if you sit down here I'll read it to you."
"We shall be late again," Duncan said, nervously. "Don't let's stop now, Elsie, and make mother cross. Could we do it after school?"
"P'raps I'd better tear it up, or give it back to granny," Elsie said, with a taunting air. "It don't matter to you."
"Oh, don't!" pleaded Duncan, divided again between the sense of duty, his own curiosity, and a fear of offending Elsie. "Do keep it till after school."