"You are a perfect hoyden!" repeated the stern voice in rising anger. "Whatever you do is done in such a loud, violent fashion that it becomes perfectly unbearable. You play ball with boys. You climb fences and trees. You are continually flying up and down the street on your detestable roller-skates and shouting until the neighborhood seems like Bedlam, and you don't appear to have the vaguest idea that people's rights need not be infringed on in such a manner; that they have the right to peace and quiet in their own homes. Even if you would content yourself with your own disorderliness! But you are not satisfied with doing what you know must annoy others; you seem to take a malicious delight in bringing the little children under your influence and making them long to follow your example. You cannot have the first shadow of generosity or bravery in your nature, or you would not urge them to do what you know their parents would disapprove of. You teach them to disobey. My daughter never told an untruth in her life until the other day. I have no reason to doubt that you taught her to tell that untruth!" Nan's cheeks suddenly became white, but she did not open her lips. "If you cannot be restrained by your own people at home you shall be by some other means. They say your own people are respectable; how can you disgrace them so?" Nan deigned no reply, but her lip curled contemptuously. "They say your mother is dead." Again no answer. "Where is your father?" "My father is in India. He is in Bombay," announced Nan, deliberately. "Who has control of you in his absence?" "No one!" declared the girl with decision. Mrs. Newton surveyed the lank, overgrown, girlish figure with unconcealed scorn. "Do you know," she said with bitter distinctness, "that you are the most shameless, unfeeling girl I have ever beheld? Any one else would show some remorse for what she had done, but you--young as you are, you are the hardest creature I have ever known. Hard, cruel, and cold. How can you stand there and look me in the face when you know how you have injured me? Tell me, does it not touch you at all that Ruth is hurt? Do you know or care that such a fall as she has had is enough to cripple a child for life? Many children have been hopelessly crippled through far less." The mother's voice broke, and she set her lips to keep down a sob. "How much is she hurt?" whispered Nan after a moment. She was trembling all over and cold and hot by turns, and she could not command her voice. It was almost more than she could do to keep from bursting into a violent fit of sobbing from her sense of injury and shame and indignation. But she simply would not permit herself to break down. No one should be allowed to think they intimidated her. But she could not hide her anxiety about Ruth. "Is she much hurt?" she repeated.