“She’s a stubborn little thing and she ought to be whipped,” cried Nessy.

“She’s stealing my milk, and I’ll tell mamma,” said Betsy.

“Tell her then,” I cried, and in a burst of anger at finding myself unable to recover control of my bowl I swept it round and flung its contents over my cousin’s head, thereby drenching her with the frothing milk and making the staircase to run like a river of whitewash.

Of course there was a fearful clamour.  Betsy Beauty shrieked and Nessy bellowed, whereupon Aunt Bridget came racing from her parlour, while my mother, white and trembling, halted to the door of her room.

“Mally, Mally, what have you done?” cried my mother, but Aunt Bridget found no need of questions.  After running upstairs to her dripping daughter, wiping her down with a handkerchief, calling her “my poor darling,” and saying, “Didn’t I tell you to have nothing more to do with that little vixen?” she fell on my mother with bitter upbraidings.

“Isabel, I hope you see now what your minx of a child is—­the little spiteful fury!”

By this time I had dropped my empty bowl on the stairs and taken refuge behind my mother’s gown, but I heard her timid voice trying to excuse me, and saying something about my cousin and a childish quarrel.

“Childish quarrel, indeed!” cried my Aunt; “there’s nothing childish about that little imp, nothing.  And what’s more, I shall be obliged to you, Isabel, if you will never again have the assurance to speak of my Betsy Beauty in the same breath with a child of yours.”

That was more than I could hear.  My little heart was afire at the humiliation put upon my mother.  So stepping out to the head of the stairs, I shouted down in my shrillest treble: 

“Your Betsy Beauty is a wicked devil, and I wouldn’t trust but she’ll burn in hell!”

Never, to the last hour of my life, shall I forget the effect of that pronouncement.  One moment Aunt Bridget stood speechless in the middle of the stairs, as if all breath had been broken out of her.  Then, ghastly white and without a word, she came flying up at me, and, before I could recover my usual refuge, she caught me, slapped me on the cheek and boxed both my ears.

I do not remember if I cried, but I know my mother did, and that in the midst of the general tumult my father came out of his room and demanded in a loud voice, which seemed to shake the whole house, to be told what was going on.

Aunt Bridget told him, with various embellishments, which my mother did not attempt to correct, and then, knowing she was in the wrong, she began to wipe her eyes with her wet handkerchief, and to say she could not live any longer where a child was encouraged to insult her.

“I have to leave this house—­I have to leave it to-morrow,” she said.

“You don’t have to do no such thing,” cried my father.  “But I’m just crazy to see if a man can’t be captain in his own claim.  These children must go to school.  They must all go—­the darned lot of ’em.”