a.
"I do wish you wouldn't be always poking and prying about where you are
not wanted. You might know that people like to be left alone
sometimes."

"I am sure," cried Betty, quite losing her temper at that, "I would
leave you quite alone always, if I could; and I am _not_ a sneak, and
that you know. It would have been better for Kitty if I had been.
I don't know how you can say such things as you do, Anna, when you know
what we have had to bear for you. I suppose you think I don't know that
it was you who should have been sent away from Miss Richards's, and not
Kitty! But I do know--I have known it all the time, though Kitty
wouldn't tell me--and I think that you and Lettice Kitson are the two
meanest, wickedest girls in all the world to let Kitty bear the blame
all this time and never clear her. But after this--"

"Betty!" Aunt Pike's voice rose almost to a scream to get above the
torrent of Betty's indignation. "How _dare_ you speak to Anna so!
How _dare_ you say such shocking things! You dreadful, naughty child,
you are in such a passion you don't know what you are saying, and you
are making Anna quite ill! Look at her, poor child!--Anna dear, come to
me; you look almost fainting, and I really don't wonder."

Anna was certainly ghastly white, and trembling uncontrollably, but as
much at the sight of her mother as from Betty's fiery onslaught.
"Yes--I do feel faint," she gasped, but she was able to walk quickly to
her mother's side, and to lead her at a brisk step away from that
smouldering heap on the ground.

"Poor child, I will take you to your room. You must lie down and keep
very quiet for a time.--Elizabeth, follow us, please, and wait for me in
the dining-room. I will come and speak to you there when I have seen to
Anna. In the meantime try to calm yourself, and prepare to apologize
for the dreadful things I heard you saying."

Betty did not reply, nor for a few moments did she attempt to follow.
Her aunt's determination to believe Anna all that was good and innocent
and injured, and herself and Kitty all that was mean and bad, increased
her resentment a thousand times. Betty could never endure injustice.

"I won't apologize. I won't. I can't. I couldn't. I have nothing to
apologize for," she thought indignantly. "It is Aunt Pike who ought to
do that, and Anna, and ask us to forgive them. I've a good mind to tell
everything. I think it is my duty to Kitty and all of us!" and Betty
st