"I hit Harriet Smales with a slate, and covered her all over with
blood, and I thought I'd killed her."

She could not meet her mother's eyes; stood with head hung down, and
her hands clasped behind her.

"What made you do it?" asked Lotty in amazement.

"I couldn't help it, mother; she--she said you were a bad woman."

Ida had raised her eyes with a look of love and proud confidence.
Lotty shrank before her, clutched convulsively at the bed-clothes,
then half raised herself and dashed her head with fearful violence
against the wall by which the bed stood. She fell back, half
stunned, and lay on the pillows, whilst the child, with outstretched
hands, gazed horror-struck. But in a moment Ida had her arms around
the distraught woman, pressing the dazed head against her breast.
Lotty began to utter incoherent self-reproaches, unintelligible to
her little comforter; her voice had become the merest whisper; she
seemed to have quite exhausted herself. Just now there came a knock
at the door, and Ida was relieved to see Mrs. Ledward, whose help
she begged. In a few minutes Lotty had come to herself again, and
whispered that she wished to speak to the landlady alone. The latter
persuaded Ida to go downstairs for a while, and the child, whose
tears had begun to flow, left the room, sobbing in anguish.

"Ain't you better then?" asked the woman, with an apparent effort to
speak in a sympathetic tone which did not come easily to her.