"You must be, or Miss Wilson would not be angry with you. Of course,
according to your own account, you are always in the right, and everyone
else is always wrong; but you shouldn't have written that in the book.
You know I speak as your friend."

"And pray what does your wretched little soul know of my motives and
feelings?"

"It is easy enough to understand you," retorted Gertrude, nettled.
"Self-conceit is not so uncommon that one need be at a loss to recognize
it. And mind, Agatha Wylie," she continued, as if goaded by some
unbearable reminiscence, "if you are really going, I don't care whether
we part friends or not. I have not forgotten the day when you called me
a spiteful cat."

"I have repented," said Agatha, unmoved. "One day I sat down and watched
Bacchus seated on the hearthrug, with his moony eyes looking into space
so thoughtfully and patiently that I apologized for comparing you to
him. If I were to call him a spiteful cat he would only not believe me."

"Because he is a cat," said Jane, with the giggle which was seldom far
behind her tears.

"No; but because he is not spiteful. Gertrude keeps a recording angel
inside her little head, and it is so full of other people's faults,
written in large hand and read through a magnifying glass, that there is
no room to enter her own."

"You are very poetic," said Gertrude; "but I understand what you mean,