“Yes,” said Griselda coolly, “and I want to play with him again.”

“Griselda,” said her aunt, “I am too astonished to say more at present.  Go to bed.”

“Why should I go to bed?  It is not my bed-time,” cried Griselda, blazing up.  “What have I done to be sent to bed as if I were in disgrace?”

“Go to bed,” repeated Miss Grizzel.  “I will speak to you to-morrow.”

“You are very unfair and unjust,” said Griselda, starting up from her chair.  “That’s all the good of being honest and telling everything.  I might have played with the little boy every day for a month and you would never have known, if I hadn’t told you.”

She banged across the room as she spoke, and out at the door, slamming it behind her rudely.  Then upstairs like a whirlwind; but when she got to her own room, she sat down on the floor and burst into tears, and when Dorcas came up, nearly half an hour later, she was still in the same place, crouched up in a little heap, sobbing bitterly.

“Oh, missie, missie,” said Dorcas, “it’s just what I was afraid of!”

As Griselda rushed out of the room Miss Grizzel leant back in her chair and sighed deeply.

“Already,” she said faintly.  “She was never so violent before.  Can one afternoon’s companionship with rudeness have already contaminated her?  Already, Tabitha—­can it be so?”

“Already,” said Miss Tabitha, softly shaking her head, which somehow made her look wonderfully like an old cat, for she felt cold of an evening and usually wore a very fine woolly shawl of a delicate grey shade, and the borders of her cap and the ruffles round her throat and wrists were all of fluffy, downy white—­“already,” she said.

“Yet,” said Miss Grizzel, recovering herself a little, “it is true what the child said.  She might have deceived us.  Have I been hard upon her, Sister Tabitha?”

“Hard upon her!  Sister Grizzel,” said Miss Tabitha with more energy than usual; “no, certainly not.  For once, Sister Grizzel, I disagree with you.  Hard upon her!  Certainly not.”

But Miss Grizzel did not feel happy.

When she went up to her own room at night she was surprised to find Dorcas waiting for her, instead of the younger maid.

“I thought you would not mind having me, instead of Martha, to-night, ma’am,” she said, “for I did so want to speak to you about Miss Griselda.  The poor, dear young lady has gone to bed so very unhappy.”

“But do you know what she has done, Dorcas?” said Miss Grizzel.  “Admitted a boy, a rude, common, impertinent boy, into my precincts, and played with him—­with a boy, Dorcas.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Dorcas.  “I know all about it, ma’am.  Miss Griselda has told me all.  But if you would allow me to give an opinion, it isn’t quite so bad.  He’s quite a little boy, ma’am—­between five and six—­only just about the age Miss Griselda’s dear papa was when he first came to us, and, by all I can hear, quite a little gentleman.”