er going to call her mamma? Don't you do it, Matilda! See
you don't. If you do, I'll not be your sister any more. She shall not
have that!"

Matilda was silent still, utterly dismayed.

"Why don't you speak? What made her do that, anyhow?"

"I don't know," said Matilda in a trembling voice. "She had a little
daughter once, and she took me"--Matilda's eyes were glittering. She
nearly broke down, but would not, and in the resistance she made to the
temptation, her head took its peculiar airy turn upon her neck. Maria
ought to have known her well enough to understand it.

"Everything comes to you!" she exclaimed. "I wonder why nothing comes
to me! There are you, set up now, you think, above all your relations;
you will not want to look at us by and by; I dare say you feel so now.
And you are dressed, and have dresses made for you, and you ride in a
carriage, and you have everything you want; and I here make dresses for
other people, and live anyhow I can; sew and sew, from morning till
night, and begin again as soon as morning comes; and never a bit of
pleasure or rest or hope of it; and can't dress myself decently, except
by the hardest! I don't know what I have done to deserve it!" said
Maria furiously. "It has always been so. Mamma loved you best, and aunt
Candy treated you best,--she didn't love anybody;--and now strangers
have taken you up; and nobody cares for me at all."

Here Maria completed her part of the harmony by bursting into tears.
And being tears of extreme mortification and envy, they were hard to
stop. The fountain was large. Matilda sat still, with her eyes
glittering, and her head in the position that with her was apt to mean
disapproval, and meant it now. But what could she say.

"It's very hard!"--Maria sobbed at last. "It's very hard!"

"Maria," said her little sister, "does it make it any harder for you,
because I am taken such good care of?"

"Yes!" said Maria. "Why should good care be taken of you any more than
of me? Of course it makes it harder."

There was nothing that it seemed wise to say; and Matilda, sometimes a
wise little child in her way, waited in silence, though very much
grieved. She began to think it was hard for Maria, though the whole
thing had got into a puzzle with her. And she thought it was a little
bit hard for herself, that she should have taken such pains to prepare
a present for her sister, and meet such a reception when she came to
offer it.

"Just look what a