hers, for the fun
of seeing "poor Theresa" appear in a similar garb with less success. But
Mrs. Minchin's tales had always a sting in them!

Mrs. Buller received me very kindly. She kissed me, and told me to call
her "Aunt Theresa," which I did ever afterwards. Aunt Theresa's
daughters and I were like sisters. They showed me their best frocks, and
told me exactly all that had been ordered in the parcel that was coming
out from England.

"Don't you have your hair put in papers?" said Matilda, whose own curls
sat stiffly round her head as regularly as the rolls of a lawyer's wig.
"Are your socks like lace? Doesn't your Ayah dress you every afternoon?"

Matilda "took me up." She was four years older than I was, which
entitled her to blend patronage with her affection for me. In the
evening of the day on which I went to the Bullers, she took me by the
hand, and tossing her curls said, "I have taken you up, Margery
Vandaleur. Mrs. Minchin told Mamma that she has taken the bride up. I
heard her say that the bride was a sweet little puss, only so childish.
That's just what Mrs. Minchin said. I heard her. And I shall say so of
you, too, as I've taken you up. You're a sweet little puss. And of
course you're childish, because you're a child," adds Miss Matilda, with
an air. For had not she begun to write her own age with two figures?

Had I known then as much as I learned afterwards of what it meant to be
"taken up" by Mrs. Minchin, I might not have thought the comparison a
good omen for my friendship with Matilda. To be hotly taken up by Mrs.
Minchin meant an equally hot quarrel at no very distant date. The
squabble with the bride was not slow to come, but Matilda and I fell out
first. I think she was tyrannical, and I know I was peevish. My Ayah
spoilt me; I spoke very broken English, and by no means understood all
that the Bullers said to me; besides which, I was feverishly unhappy at
intervals about my father.

It was two months before Mrs. Minchin found out that her sweet little
puss was a deceitful little cat; but at the end of two days I had
offended Matilda, and we plunged into a war of words such as children
wage when they squabble.

"I won't show you any more of my dresses," said Matilda.

"I've seen them all," I boldly asserted; and the stroke told.

"You don't know that," said Matilda.

"Yes, I do."

"No, you don't."

"Well, show me the others then."

"No, that I won't."

"I don't care."

"I've got