asked already:

"Do you think Alan is getting worse again?"

"Not so very much," said the girl, candidly. "He's been at the club, I
suppose, but he left the table partly because I vexed him."

"Because you what?"

"Because I vexed him. He was scolding me, and I wouldn't stand it."

Her aunt tasted her tea, and found it so quite what she liked that she
said, from a natural satisfaction with Bessie, "I don't see what he had
to scold you about."

"Well," returned Bessie, and she got her pretty voice to the level of her
aunt's hearing, with some straining, and kept it there, "when he is in
that state, he has to scold some one; and I had been rather annoying, I
suppose."

"What had you been doing?" asked her aunt, making out her words more from
the sight than from the sound, after all.

"I had been walking home with a jay, and we found Alan trying to get in
at the front door with his key, and I introduced him to the jay."

Miss Louisa Lynde had heard the word so often from her niece and nephew,
that she imagined herself in full possession of its meaning. She asked:
"Where had you met him?"