“Stand just in front of me,” she said, “and let me look at you.  My word!  I never did see a more elegant figure.  Don’t you think that you are something like a peacock—­fine above and ugly below?”

“No, I don’t, Aunt Church,” said Susy.

“Tut, tut, child!  Don’t give me any of your sauce, but just answer a straight question.  Where did you get that bodice?  It is singularly fine for a little girl like you.  Where did you get it?”

“I don’t think it is any business of yours, Aunt Church.”

“Susy!” said her mother in a voice of terror.  “Don’t talk like that.  You know very well you mustn’t be rude to Aunt Church.—­Don’t mind her, aunt; she is a very naughty girl.”

“I am not, mother,” said Susy; “and it’s awfully unkind of you to say it of me.  I am not a bit rude.  But it is not Aunt Church’s affair.  I didn’t steal the blouse; I came by it honestly, and it wasn’t bought out of any of Aunt Church’s money.”

“That remains to be proved,” said Mrs. Church.  “Susan Hopkins, I don’t like you nor your ways.  When I was young I knew a little girl, and you remind me of her.  She had a face summat like yours, no way pretty, but what you’d call boastful and conceited; and she thought a sight of herself, and put on gay dress that she had no call to wear.  She strutted about among the neighbors, and they said, ’Fine feathers make fine birds,’ and laughed at her past bearing.  But she didn’t mind, because she was a little girl that was meant to go to the bad—­and she did.  She learned to be a thief, and she broke her mother’s heart, and she was locked up in prison.  In prison she had to wear the ugly convict-dress with the broad-arrow stamped on all her clothes.  Afterwards, when she came out again, her poor mother had died, and her grandmother likewise; and her brother, who was the moral image of Tom there, wouldn’t receive her in his house.  I haven’t heard of her for a long time back, but most likely she died in the work-house.  Well, Susan, you may take my little story for what it is worth, and much good may it do you.”

“I think you are very rude indeed, Aunt Church,” said Susy.  “I don’t see that I’m bound to submit to your ugly, cruel words.  I like this blouse, and I’ll wear it whenever I wish.”

“Oh, hoity-toity!” said the old lady; “impudent as well as everything else.  That I should live to see it!—­Mary Hopkins, can it be convenient to you to let me have the remainder of my hundred pounds?  There wasn’t any contract but that I could demand it whenever I wanted it, and it is about convenient to me that I should have it back now.  You owe me between thirty and forty pounds, and I’d like, I will say, to see the color of my money.  It can’t be at all ill-convenient to you to give it to me when you can afford blouses of that quality for your impudent young daughter.  Real lace, forsooth!  I know it when I see it.  We’ll say Wednesday week to receive the money, and I will come over in my bath-chair, drawn by Tom, to take it; and I will give Tom a whole shilling for himself the day I get it back.  That will be quite convenient to you, Mary Hopkins, won’t it?”