Page:Mrs Molesworth - The Cuckoo Clock.djvu/214

188 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