At that moment something shook the tree, and I clung to Roger in terror. I could not see what it was from among the thick leaves where we were sitting. I trembled at the echo of my own voice. The dark thoughts within seemed to have brought night with its nameless terrors into the heart of day. But Roger leant down from the branch, and said,-- "Cousin Placidia! For shame! You shook the tree on purpose. I heard the apples fall on the ground, and you are picking them up. That is cheating." For the fallen fruit was the right of us, children. Said Placidia in a smooth, unmoved voice,-- "I came against the stem of the tree by accident, and perhaps I did shake it a little more than I need, when I heard what Olive said. They were very wicked words, and I shall tell Aunt Dorothy." "You may tell any one you like," said Roger indignantly. "Olive did not mean to say anything wrong. You are cruel enough to sit in the Star-chamber, Placidia." "She is exactly like our gray cat," he continued to me, as she glided away, "with her soft, noiseless ways, and her stealthy, steady following of her own interests. When the fowl-house was burnt down last year, and the turkeys were screaming, and the hens cackling, and every one flying hither and thither trying to save somebody or something, I saw the gray cat quietly licking her lips in a corner over a poor singed chicken. I believe she thought the whole thing had been set on foot to roast her supper. And Placidia would have done precisely the same. If London were on fire, and she in it, I believe she would contrive to get her supper roasted on the cinders. And the provoking thing is, she thinks no one sees." Roger was not often vehement in speech, but Placidia was our standing grievance, his and mine. There were certain little unfairnesses, not quite cheating, certain little meannesses, not quite dishonesties, and certain little prevarications, not quite lies, which always excited his greatest wrath, especially when, as often happened, I was the loser or the sufferer by them. "Do you think she will tell Aunt Dorothy?" I said, for that very morning Placidia and I had had a quarrel, she having pinched my arm where it could not be seen, and I having to my shame bitten her finger where it could be seen. "I don't know, and I don't care," said Roger loftily. "What is the good of minding? I suppose we must all go through a certain quantity of punishment, Olive, and it is to be hoped it will do us good for the future, if we did not deserve it by the past. At least Aunt Dorothy says so. Go on with what you were saying." So I recurred to my question.