her eyes were very
clear and blue, and her skin very white, with a rosy flush; and her
nose was straight, and the shape was a pretty delicate one. Amy really
did think Mr. Wingfield was right, and had better taste than the people
who thought her a poor washy, peaky thing, as she had more than once
heard herself called.

She put her head on one side, smirked a little, half shut her eyes, and
studied herself in different positions, till she heard one of her aunts
on the stairs; and then, in a desperate fright lest she should be
caught, she darted out so fast as to run against Aunt Charlotte coming
up stairs with a basket of clean linen from the wash. There were three
pairs of stockings rolled up on the top, and these tumbled out, and one
pair went hop, hop, from step to step all the way down stairs, just as
Father was coming in, and he caught it up and threw it like a ball
straight up at his sister.

The confusion drove the nonsense out of Amy's head for the present. She
ate her dinner, and then went off as usual for her visit to little Edwin
Smithers, carrying him only a few strawberries, as she knew he always
had soup from the Hall on a Monday.

For Edwin had not died. He had rather grown better than worse, and if
the truth must be told, Amy had begun to get a little tired of him. He
was not a quick child, and in this hot weather he often failed to do the
sums or learn the verses that Amy set him.

To-day he was nursing a great piece of stick-liquorice with which he had
painted a dirty spot on the central face in the picture of the number of
the _Chatterbox_ which she had lent him. She scolded him for it, and he
turned sulky, and would not try to repeat his hymn, nor answer any
questions, and looked at his book as if he had never seen one before.

Amy grew angry, told him he was a naughty boy, and she should not stay
with him nor give him any strawberries; and off she went, carrying away
the injured _Chatterbox_, and never bethinking herself that the hot day
and the weariness of the dull untidy room might not be the cause of the
naughty fit, and whether it would not have been kinder and better to try
to soothe him out of it.

But instead of this she paused to hear Mrs. Rowe declare he was a bad
'un, with a nasty sulky temper that no one could do nothing with, and
just then she saw Florence Cray crossing the village green.

"I've just been to get a little red pepper at Hollis's," she said, as
she put her arm fond