Both girls were a little awe-stricken at this speech.
But Ella soon recovered herself, and said, "she hated to hear people talk like Methodists."
"What are you talking about, Matty?" asked Clementina, gently; "I don't quite understand."
"Not understand!—why, sure—heart alive!—it can't be as you are ignorant of who made and keeps you and all of us! Sure! Sure!" Matty kept repeating in a tone of much distress, "I can't believe my own ears."
"I suppose we know about all that," said Ella, haughtily.
She to teach her!—the child of charity to presume to insinuate a want in her! The idea was intolerable.
She went and sat down at a table at some little distance, and pretended to be busy playing with her bird, whose golden cage stood upon it; but, as she did so, she listened in spite of herself to the following conversation, passing between Clementina and Matty.
"I am so uncomfortable," the young girl was saying, rather fretfully; "I don't know what to do with myself. I try this thing and try that thing, and nothing gives me any ease or amusement; and I think it very hard—I can't help thinking it hard—that I should have to suffer every thing, and Ella, there, nothing; and then, Nurse makes such a favorite of her, and nobody in the wide world cares for me. Oh, I am so miserable, sometimes!"
"I used to be like you, once, Miss," said Matty.
At which Ella gave a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.