Rosy | Page 7

asked her mother, very gently.
Rosy looked at her in surprise. Her mother spoke so gently. She had rather expected her to be shocked--she had almost, if you can understand, wished her to be shocked, so that she could say to herself how naughty everybody thought her, how it was no use her trying to be good and all the rest of it--and she had told over what she had done in a hard, _un_sorry way, almost on purpose. But now, when her mother spoke so kindly, a different feeling came into her heart. She looked at her mother, and then she looked down on the ground, and then, almost to her own surprise, she answered, almost humbly,
"I don't know. I don't think I was, but I think I am a little sorry now."
Seeing her so unusually gentle, her mother went a little further. "What made you so vexed with Colin?" she asked. Rosy's face hardened.
"Mother," she said, "you'd better not ask me. It was because of something he said that I don't want to tell you."
"About Beata?" asked her mother.
"Well," said Rosy, "if you know about it, it isn't my fault if you are vexed. I don't want her to come--I don't want any little girl to come, because I know I shan't like her. I like boys better than girls, and I don't like good little girls at all."
"Rosy," said her mother, "you are talking so sillily that if Fixie even talked like that I should be quite surprised. I won't answer you. I will not say any more about Beata--you know what I wish, and what is right, and so I will leave it to you. And I will give you a kiss, my little girl, to show you that I want to trust you to try to do right about this."
She was stooping to kiss her, when Rosy stopped her.
"Thank you, mother," she said. "But I don't think I can take the kiss like that--I don't want to like the little girl."
"Rosy!" exclaimed her mother, almost in despair. Then another thought struck her. She bent down again and kissed the child. "I give you the kiss, Rosy," she said, "hoping it will at least make you wish to please me."
"Oh," said Rosy, "I do want to please you, mother, about everything except that."
But her mother thought it best to take no further notice, only in her own heart she said to herself, "Was there ever such a child?"
In spite of all she had said Rosy felt, what she would not have owned for the world, a good deal of curiosity about the little girl who was to come to live with them. And now and then, in her cross and unhappy moods, a sort of strange confused hope would creep over her that Beata's coming would bring her a kind of good luck.
"Everybody says she's so good, and everybody loves her," thought Rosy, "p'raps I'll find out how she does it."
And the days passed on, on the whole, after the storm I have told you about, rather more peaceably than before, till one evening when Rosy was saying good-night her mother said to her quietly,
"Rosy, I had a letter this morning from Beata's uncle; he is bringing her to-morrow. She will be here about four o'clock in the afternoon."
"To-morrow!" said Rosy, and then, without saying any more, she kissed her mother and went to bed.
She went to sleep that evening, and she woke the next morning with a strange jumble of feelings in her mind, and a strange confusion of questions waiting to be answered.
"What would Beata be like? She was sure to be pretty--all people that other people love very much were pretty, Rosy thought. And she believed that she herself was very ugly, which, I may tell you, children, as Rosy won't hear what we say, was quite a mistake. Everybody is a little pretty who is sweet and good, for though being sweet and good doesn't alter the colour of one's hair or the shape of one's nose, it does a great deal; it makes the cross lines smooth away, or, rather, prevents their coming, and it certainly gives the eyes a look that nothing else gives, does it not? But Rosy's face, alas! was very often spoilt by frowns, and dark looks often took away the prettiness of her eyes, and this was the more pity as the good fairies who had welcomed her at her birth had evidently meant her to be pretty. She had very soft bright hair, and a very white skin, and large brown eyes that looked lovely when she let sweet thoughts and feelings shine through them; but though she had many faults, she was not vain, and she really thought she was not pleasant-looking at all.
"Beata is