‘I did used to have meat breakfasts,’ he repeated stubbornly.
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Emmeline, severely. ‘But I haven’t time to talk about that just now. What I wanted to say was to tell you how vexed I am to hear that you spent last night in the summer-house. Why, just suppose Mr. Brown had found you there when he came to work this morning! There would have been a dreadful fuss, and you would have been sent back to Mother Grimes!’
‘And do you reckon I’d mind that?’ he asked, scornfully. ‘I’d a deal sooner be with her than with you, I can tell you.’
Emmeline took this for mere bravado, but she turned rather white, none the less, and it was with an effort that she recovered herself and said gently: ‘I don’t think you mean that. Anyhow, I hope you’ll try and be a brave boy to-night, and not make a fuss about sleeping in your own little house. It’s true it _is_ rather bare just at present, but think how many poor little boys have no house at all to sleep in.’
‘Lor! how she do jaw!’ exclaimed Diamond Jubilee, with a rude laugh.
If Emmeline had been white a minute before, she turned crimson now.
‘You are a very naughty, ungrateful boy!’ she cried, as the tears rushed to her eyes, ‘and I’m not going to waste any more time bothering about you. Give me that glass, please,’ and, having snatched it out of his hands, she ran across the lane into their own garden, feeling more hurt and angry than she had ever done in her life before.
She calmed down a little after she had rushed upstairs to her own room and rinsed out the glass, and by the time she had dabbed her eyes with a wet sponge and dried them with a towel, she had almost forgiven Diamond Jubilee.
‘After all, it only shows how badly he needs someone to teach him better,’ she told herself, bravely, ‘so I must try to be patient with him, poor boy! But, oh dear, I wonder whether Kathleen ever found those children whom she was an angel to, so trying?’
‘I’m sure people’s adopted children matter much more than their stupid French exercises!’ wailed Kitty. Her own French exercise had been so very stupid that Miss Miller had sentenced her to stay in after lessons and write it over again; and now Emmeline had announced her intention of going into the village to buy Diamond Jubilee’s food-supply. It was really too hard, Kitty felt, to be kept in to-day of all days.