"Be careful, missie, now do, there's a dear good girl," said Dorcas anxiously, an hour later, when Griselda, dressed as usual in her little white muslin frock, was ready to join her aunts at dessert. But Griselda would not condescend to make any reply. "Aunt Grizzel," she said suddenly, when she had eaten an orange and three biscuits and drunk half a glass of home-made elder-berry wine, "Aunt Grizzel, when I was out in the garden to-day--down the wood-path, I mean--I met a little boy, and he played with me, and I want to know if he may come every day to play with me." Griselda knew she was not making her request in a very amiable or becoming manner; she knew, indeed, that she was making it in such a way as was almost certain to lead to its being refused; and yet, though she was really so very, very anxious to get leave to play with little Phil, she took a sort of spiteful pleasure in injuring her own cause. How _foolish_ ill-temper makes us! Griselda had allowed herself to get so angry at the _thought_ of being thwarted that had her aunt looked up quietly and said at once, "Oh yes, you may have the little boy to play with you whenever you like," she would really, in a strange distorted sort of way, have been _disappointed_. But, of course, Miss Grizzel made no such reply. Nothing less than a miracle could have made her answer Griselda otherwise than as she did. Like Dorcas, for an instant, she was utterly "flabbergasted," if you know what that means. For she was really quite an old lady, you know, and sensible as she was, things upset her much more easily than when she was younger. Naughty Griselda saw her uneasiness, and enjoyed it. "Playing with a boy!" exclaimed Miss Grizzel. "A boy in my grounds, and you, my niece, to have played with him!" "Yes," said Griselda coolly, "and I want to play with him again." "Griselda," said her aunt, "I am too astonished to say more at present. Go to bed." "Why should I go to bed? It is not my bedtime," cried Griselda, blazing up. "What have I done to be sent to bed as if I were in disgrace?" "Go to bed," repeated Miss Grizzel. "I will speak to you to-morrow." "You are very unfair and unjust," said Griselda, starting up from her chair. "That's all the good of being honest and telling everything. I might have played with the little boy every day for a month and you would never have known, if I hadn't told you." She banged across the room as she spoke, and out at the door, slamming it behind her rudely. Then upstairs like a whirlwind; but when she got to her own room, she sat down on the floor and burst into tears, and when Dorcas came up, nearly half an hour later, she was still in the same place, crouched up in a little heap, sobbing bitterly. "Oh, missie, missie," said Dorcas, "it's just what I was afraid of!" As Griselda rushed out of the room Miss Grizzel leant back in her chair and sighed deeply.