''Shouldn''t I!'' said Dainty. She showed her fist. ''Cheat my best pal, would you?'' she said to Maud. ''Lock her up in a madhouse and sew up her hair?'' Maud said nothing, but slightly turned her head. Dainty shook her fist again, then let it sink. She caught my eye. ''Seems an awful shame, though, Sue. Miss Lilly turning out to be such a sport, and all. And brave? I done her ears last week, and she never cried once. And then, she has took to taking stitches out, that natural—''
All right, Dainty,'' said Mrs Sucksby quickly.
I looked again at Maud—at her neat ear which, I now saw, had a crystal drop falling from it on a wire of gold; and at the curls in her fair hair; and at her dark eye-brows. They had been tweezered into two fine arches. Above her chair—I had not seen this before, either, but it seemed all of a piece with the drops, the curls and arches, the bangles on her wrist—above her chair there was hanging, from a beam, a little cage of wicker with a yellow bird in it.
I felt tears rise into my throat.
''You have taken everything that was mine,'' I said. ''You have taken it, and made it better.''
''I took it,'' she answered, ''because it was yours. Because I must!''
''Why must you? Why?''
She opened her mouth to speak. Then she looked at Mrs Sucksby and her face changed.