"DO FORGIVE ME, MOTHER DARLING!"
"I'd rather you did shake me," said Hepsie, in a quivering tone, "only you couldn't do such a thing, I know. You're too kind—and I'm always saying something I shouldn't. Do forgive me, mother darling! You can't think what a relief it was to me to speak like that to my grandfather, who thinks he's all the world, and something more, just because he's the Lord of the Manor and got a hateful heap of money, and it'll do him good (when he's got over his rage) to feel that there's his own little granddaughter who isn't afraid of him and tells him the truth——"
"Hepsie!"
Hepsie paused, and stared. Her gentle mother was gazing so strangely and sternly at her.
"You are speaking of my father, Hepsie," she said quietly, but in a voice new to her child, though it was still gentle and low, "and in treating him with disrespect you have hurt me deeply."
"Oh, but mother—darling, darling mother," cried the child, with tears springing to her beautiful eyes, "I wouldn't hurt you for a million wicked old grandfathers! I'd rather let him do anything he liked that was bad to me, but what I can't stand is his making you sad and unhappy, and making poor daddy go right away again to that far-away place in South Africa, which he never need have done if it hadn't been for being poor, though he must be finding money now, or he couldn't send you those lovely furs, and——"
"Oh, Hepsie, Hepsie, that little tongue, how it gallops along! Be quiet at once, and listen to me! There, dear, I can't bear to see tears in your eyes on Christmas Day, and when you and I are just the two together on this day—your father so many, many miles distant from us, and poor grandfather nursing his anger all alone in the big old house."
Her tone was full of a deep sorrow, and for once, young as she was, Hepsie understood that here was an emotion upon which she must not remark, though she muttered in her own heart:
"All through his own wicked old temper."