‘She really thought it would,’ said Mysie. At which the young barbarians shouted aloud with contempt, and Valetta added. ‘She is afraid of everything--cows and dogs and frogs.’ ‘I got a whole match-box full of grasshoppers to shut up in her desk and make her squall,’ said Wilfred, ‘only the girls went and turned them out.’ ‘It was so cruel to the poor grasshoppers,’ said Mysie. ‘One had his horn broken, and dragged his leg.’ ‘What does she do?’ asked Jasper. ‘She’s always cross,’ said Fergus. ‘And she won’t play,’ added Valetta. ‘And never will lend us anything of hers.’ ‘And she’s a regular sneak,’ said Wilfred. ‘She wants to tell of everything--only we stopped that and she doesn’t dare now.’ ‘You see,’ said Mysie, gravely, ‘she has always lived alone and in London, and that makes her horribly stupid about everything sensible. We thought we should soon teach her to be nice; and mamma says we shall if we are patient.’ ‘We’ll teach her, won’t we, Japs!’ said Wilfred, aside, in an ominous voice. ‘She is only thirteen,’ added Valetta, ‘and she pretends to be grown up, and only to care for a grown-up young lady--that Constance Hacket.’ ‘Yes,’ added Mysie, ‘only think--they write poetry!’ ‘What rot it must be!’ said Jasper. ‘There’s a man in my house that writes poetry, and don’t they chaff him! And this must be ever so much worse.’ ‘Oh, that it is,’ said Valetta. ‘I heard Mr. Poulter and Miss Vincent laughing about it like anything.’ ‘But they get it put into print,’ said Mysie, still impressed. ‘Miss Hacket brought it up to give to mamma, and there’s ever so much of it shut up in the drawing-room blotting-book with the malachite knobs. I can’t think why they laugh--I think it is very pretty. Old Miss Hacket read me the one about “My Lost Dove.”’ ‘Mysie always will stick up for Dolores,’ said Valetta in a grumbling voice. ‘I always meant her to be my friend,’ said Mysie, disconsolately. ‘Well, I’m glad she’s not,’ said Jasper. ‘What a sell it would have been for me to find you chummy with a stupid, poetry-writing, good-for-nothing girl like that, instead of my jolly old Mice!’ And at that minute all Dolly’s slights were fully compensated for! There was a lurking purpose in the boys’ minds that if Dolores would not join in fun, yet still fun should be extracted from her. Jasper had brought home a box of Japanese fireworks, and Wilfred, who was superintending his unpacking, proposed to light the serpent and place it in Dolores’s path as she was going up to bed; but Jasper was old enough to reply that he would have no concern with anything so low and snobbish as such a trick. In fact, there was in Jasper’s mind a decided line between bullying and teasing, which did not exist as yet in Wilfred’s conscience. And, altogether, Dolores was in a state of mind that made her stiff letters to her father betray low spirits and discontent.