But Mrs. Vane interrupted her.

‘Oh, Bridget,’ she exclaimed in a tone of vexation, ’what have you been doing to yourself?  Do you see, Alie?  Her skirt is torn from top to bottom—­the stuff torn, not the seam.  And so dirty.  Your new frock too—­really, child, you are too provoking.’

Biddy’s round rosy face grew longer and redder, and her eyes filled with tears.  She opened her mouth to speak, but Rosalys came before her.

‘It isn’t so very bad, dear mamma,’ she said eagerly.  ’I’ve been looking at it.  It looks worse because of the sand, but it isn’t really dirty; it will brush off.  She rolled down one of the sand-hills.  I’m afraid it was my fault.  It was my idea to play about there.’

Mrs. Vane glanced at Alie’s own garments.

‘Your frock is none the worse,’ she said.  ’I do not see that Bride need have hurt hers if she had been the least careful.  But you are so incorrigibly heedless, Bridget, and so thoughtless.  Why, you were dancing and jumping and calling to Smut when I met you as if there was nothing the matter!  I suppose you had forgotten all about your frock already.’

Mrs. Vane’s voice was rather sharp as she spoke thus to the little girl.  It sounded quite differently from the bright sweet tone in which she had greeted them.  And it did not seem to suit her to speak sharply.  She was very pretty and sweet-looking, and she seemed young to be tall Alie’s mother; indeed, people often said they looked more like sisters:  stout, sturdy little Bridget was quite unlike them both.

Rosalys looked up at her mother anxiously.  She could not bear her to be troubled, and though she was sorry for Bridget, she was vexed with her too.  She slipped her arm inside Mrs. Vane’s and drew her on.

‘It’s too cold to stand still, mamma dear,’ she said.  ’Let us walk on to that beautiful smooth piece of sand—­it’s rather stony just here.  Biddy, take care of Smut.’

That meant, ‘You may stay behind and keep out of the way a little.’  Biddy had no objection to do so.

‘Come, Smuttie, stay by me,’ she said coaxingly to the little shaggy black dog.  Smut was very fond of Bridget, who had a very big heart for all dumb animals.  He wagged his tail and looked up in her face with inquiring sympathy, for he saw quite well that Biddy was in trouble.  This was nothing new; many and many a time had the little girl buried her tearful face in his rough coat and sobbed out her sorrows to him.  They were never very big sorrows really, but they were big to her, and rendered bigger by the knowledge in her honest little heart that they were generally and mostly, if not entirely, brought about by her own fault.

She could not stoop down to cry on Smut’s back now; it would have risked considerable more dirtying of her poor frock.  But she stayed some way behind her mother and sister, so that she might talk without being overheard by any one save her four-legged companion.