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Countess Kate by Charlotte Mary Yonge
page 66 of 234 (28%)
She had been a famous battledore-player in the galleries of Caergwent
Castle; and once when she took up the battledore to give a lesson, it
seemed as if, between her and Mrs. Lacy, the shuttlecock would not
come down--they kept up five hundred and eighty-one, and then only
stopped because it was necessary for her to go to dinner.

She could not conceive anyone being unable to play at battledore, and
thought Kate's failures and dislike pure perverseness. Once Kate by
accident knocked her shuttlecock through the window, and hoped she
had got rid of it; but she was treated as if she had done it out of
naughtiness, and a new instrument of torture, as she called it, was
bought for her.

It was no wonder she did not see the real care for her welfare, and
thought this intensely cruel and unkind; but it was a great pity that
she visited her vexation on poor Mrs. Lacy, to whom the game was even
a greater penance than to herself, especially on a warm day, with a
bad headache.

Even in her best days at home, Kate had resisted learning to take
thought for others. She had not been considerate of Mary's toil, nor
of Mr. Wardour's peace, except when Armyn or Sylvia reminded her; and
now that she had neither of them to put it into her mind, she never
once thought of her governess as one who ought to be spared and
pitied. Yet if she had been sorry for Mrs. Lacy, and tried to spare
her trouble and annoyance, how much irritability and peevishness, and
sense of constant naughtiness, would have been prevented! And it was
that feeling of being always naughty that was what had become the
real dreariness of Kate's present home, and was far worse than the
music, the battledore, or even the absence of fun.
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