A BAD SPIRIT. 
343 
“I wish to know what the matter is,” she 
said. “Have you been quarrelling?” 
“Ho, ma’am,” replied Richard, simply. 
“I don’t know what you call quarrelling,” 
retorted Matilda. “ I say you boys quar¬ 
relled with Annie and treated her shame¬ 
fully, all for the sake of a loafer that you 
had no business to speak to at all. If I 
were Annie I would tell grandfather.” 
Annie did not look very well pleased 
with this defence of her cousin’s; while 
Antoinette said, sharply, as usual,— 
“ I do not see that it is any business of 
your’s, Matilda.” 
Miss Taylor now called upon Kate for a 
statement of the case; and she gave it 
simply, without trying to favour any one. 
As Annie listened, she could not but allow 
that her friend’s version was correct, and 
she was surprised to see how little ground 
she had for being so much hurt. She began 
to be as much mortified as she had before 
been vexed, and blushed scarlet when Miss 
Taylor said,— 
“I do not see, after all, Annie, what you 
had to complain of.” 
