Its cheeks were swollen, and its whole aspect revealed the spirit of wrath roused at last, and the fire alight in the furnace of the bosom. She tried to smile, but what came was the smile of a wound rather than a mouth. "My poor Amy! what is the matter?" cried Hester, sorry, but hardly surprised; for plainly things had been going from bad to worse. The girl burst into a passionate fit of weeping. She threw herself in wild abandonment on the floor, and sobbed; then, as if to keep herself from screaming aloud, stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth, kicked with her little feet, and beat her little hands on the floor. She was like a child in a paroxysm of rage--only that with her its extravagance came of the effort to overcome it. "Amy, dear, you mustn't be naughty!" said Hester, kneeling down beside her and taking hold of her arm. "I'm not naughty, miss--at least I am doing all I can to get over it," she sobbed. Thereupon she ceased suddenly, and sitting up on the floor, her legs doubled under her in eastern fashion, looked straight at Hester, and said thoughtfully, as if the question had just come, with force to make her forget the suffering she was in-- "I _should_ like to know how you would do in my place--that I should, miss!" The words spoken, her eyes fell, and she sat still as a statue, seeming steadfastly to regard her own lap. "I am afraid, if I were in your place, I should do nothing so well as you, Amy," said Hester. "But come, tell me what is the matter. What puts you in such a misery?" "Oh, it's not one thing nor two things nor twenty things!" answered Amy, looking sullen with the feeling of heaped-up wrong. "What _would_ my mother say to see me served so! _She_ used to trust me everywhere and always! I don't understand how those two prying suspicious old maids _can_ be _my_ mother's sisters!" She spoke slowly and sadly, without raising her eyes. "Don't they behave well to you, my poor child?" said Hester.