"Your step-father doesn't, anyway. That's why I can make him do what I like when I take the trouble. When people love you they'll never do anything for you,--not even answer a plain question with a plain yes or no. Go and get the Bradshaw. You'll be sorry when I'm gone." "Aunt Julia, you don't really mean it." "Of course not. I never mean anything except the things I don't say. The Bradshaw!" Betty came and sat on the arm of her aunt's chair. "It's not fair to tease me," she said, "and tantalise me. You know how mizzy I am." "No. I don't know anything. You won't tell me anything. Go and get--" "Dear, darling, pretty, kind, clever Aunt," cried Betty, "I'd give my ears to go." "Then borrow a large knife from cook, and sharpen it on the front door-step! No--I don't mean to use it on your step-father. I'll have your pretty ears mummified and wear them on my watch-chain. No--mind my spectacles! Let me go. I daresay it won't come to anything." "Do you really mean you'd take me?" "I'd take you fast enough, but I wouldn't keep you. We must find a dragon to guard the Princess. Oh, we'll get a nice tame kind puss-cat of a dragon,--but that dragon will not be your Aunt Julia! Let me go, I say. I thought you didn't care about anything any more?" "I didn't know there could be anything to care for," said Betty honestly, "especially Paris. Well, I won't if you hate it so, but oh, aunt--" She still sat on the floor by the chair her aunt had left, and thought and thought. The aunt went straight down to the study. "Now, Cecil," she said, coming briskly in and shutting the door, "you've made that poor child hate the thought of you and you've only yourself to thank." "I know you think so," said he, closing the heavy book over which he had been stooping. "I don't mean," she added hastily, for she was not a cruel woman, "that she really hates you, of course. But you've frightened her, and shaken her nerves, locking her up in her room like that. Upon my word, you are old enough to know better!" "I was so alarmed, so shaken myself--" he began, but she interrupted him. "I didn't come in and disturb your work just to say all that, of course," she said, "but really, Cecil, I understand things better than you think. I know how fond you really are of Betty." The Reverend Cecil doubted this; but he said nothing. "And you know that I'm fond enough of the child myself. Now, all this has upset you both tremendously. What do you propose to do?" "I--I--nothing I thought. The less said about these deplorable affairs the better. Lizzie will soon recover her natural tone, and forget all about the matter." "Then you mean to let everything go on in the old way?" "Why, of course," said he uneasily. "Well, it's your own affair, naturally," she spoke with a studied air of detachment which worried him exactly as it was meant to do.