laughed over all at once. I don't think she quite liked it, though she
couldn't help laughing, too, but her cheeks were very red, when Miss
Grant raised her own head. She kept Lottie flat on her back, and looked
down at her, the most thorough amusement all over her face.

"Cross enough, do you think? Oh, yes, to be sure I can! Cross enough to
eat you up at one mouthful, and little Sissy after you!"

How funny it sounded! Lottie laughed and so did I, only very nervously.
Then all at once Miss Grant grew very comically grave, and asked us
whether we thought we should soon make her cross? And then followed
such a funny talk, I think I shall never forget it. Miss Grant was half
lying on the sofa now, Lottie and I were bobbing up and down beside her,
sometimes looking right into her blue laughing eyes, sometimes hiding
our own rosy faces, that she mightn't see how queer she made us feel.

"You don't much like the idea of having a governess, I see," she said;
"you fancy it will be lessons, lessons all day long now, a great deal of
crying, and punishments, very hard things to learn, and no fun any more.
If that's what it really is going to be, I shall get so unhappy that I
shall soon run away home again! And then you think I shall have to grow
cross and ill-tempered, too--that is the worst part of it all."

She pretended to be ready to cry, and Lottie, who didn't quite like to
give up her own opinion, muttered something about "She thought they
always were!"

"Are they?" asked Miss Grant, just as if she really wanted to know, and,
when we laughed and hid our faces, she went on: "I think I know how it
is. This is what you will do to me: You will begin by getting into all