Annie laughed. "I know it," she said with a sort of meek amusement.
"I don't think I ever can master long and short stitch."

"Why on earth do you attempt it then?"

"Everybody embroiders," replied Annie. She did not state that her
grandmother had made taking the embroidery a condition of her call
upon her friend.

Margaret continued to regard her. She was finding a species of salve
for her own disappointment in this irritant applied to another. "What
does make you wear that hair ring?" said she.

"It was a present," replied Annie humbly, but she for the first time
looked a little disturbed. That mourning emblem with her father's and
mother's, and a departed sister's hair in a neat little twist under a
small crystal, grated upon her incessantly. It struck her as a
species of ghastly sentiment, which at once distressed, and impelled
her to hysterical mirth.

"A present," repeated Margaret. "If anybody gave me such a present as
that, I would never wear it. It is simply in shocking bad taste."

"I sometimes fear so," said Annie. She did not state that her Aunt
Jane never allowed her to be seen in public without that dismal
adornment.

"You are a queer girl," said Margaret, and she summed up all her mood
of petty cruelty and vicarious revenge in that one word "queer."