FLOSSIE'S GRIEVANCES
It was just as well that May had had sufficient forethought to provide
herself with a bundle of sweets in the shape of a peace-offering for
Flossie, for when they got in they found Flossie in anything but an
amiable mood.
And when Flossie was not in an amiable mood, she was anything but an
agreeable young person.
She was sitting in the schoolroom, staring sullenly out of the window
and kicking impatiently against the window-board in a way which upset
Miss Clark's nerves until they could only be fairly described as
"shattered."
[Illustration: She was sitting in the schoolroom, staring sullenly out
of the window.]
For everything from first to last had gone wrong with poor Flossie that
morning. In the first place, she had been intensely disappointed at
being left at home that Sarah might go in the carriage with Mrs. Stubbs.
Flossie was particularly fond of going out with her mother in the
carriage, and was also very fond of shopping. It was, therefore, quite
in vain that Miss Clark tried to make her understand that Sarah had not
been taken for favouritism, but simply in order that her aunt might buy
her the clothes necessary for their trip to Brighton. Flossie thought
and said it was a horrid shame, and vowed vengeance on the unfortunate
and inoffensive, though offending, Sarah in consequence.
"Nasty little mean white-faced thing!" she exclaimed. "I suppose I
shall always be shoved into the background now, just that she may be
coddled up and made to think herself better than anybody else. Princess
Sarah! Yes, that's to be the new idea. We're all to be put on one side
for Princess Sarah."
"Flossie," said Miss Clark, very severely, "you ought to be thoroughly
ashamed of yourself. To be jealous of a poor little girl who has no
father or mother, who has come among strangers at nine years old, and is
fretting her poor little heart out for the sake of the father who loved
her better than any one in all the world; to be jealous of her being
taken out once when you know it is only on business they have gone--oh!
for shame, Flossie! for shame!"
"Oh, well, she needn't fret after her pa so much," Flossie retorted, not
taking Miss Clark's remarks to heart at all. "He didn't do so much for
her. He wasn't a gentleman like Pa. If he had been, he'd have left her
some money of her own."
Miss Clark's whole soul rose up in absolute loathing within her.
"You vulgar, vulgar child!" she thought. Aloud she said, "Flossie, my
dear, a _lady_ would not say such a thing as that. Your mother would be
very, _very_ angry if she heard it. Come, it is useless to stay
grumbling and sulking here; you will have to accept the situation. Mrs.
Stubbs is your mother, and the mistress of this house and family. She
does not ask your leave whether she shall take you out with her or not.
She would be a very bad mother to you if she did, instead of being, as
she is now, a very good one. Let me hear not another word, but put your
things on to go out with me."
"Is Tom going?" Flossie inquired, not daring to refuse, though she would
dearly have liked to do so.
"No. Tom and Johnnie are going out with Charles."
"And I have to just go out with you and three stupid girls?"
"With your three sisters, certainly."
"It's a beastly shame," Flossie burst out.
"Not another word," said the governess sharply. "Go and get ready at
once."
And poor Flossie had to go. Of course it happened that as she began
wrong at the beginning nothing went very well with her during the rest
of the morning. Miss Clark went the one way she hated above all others;
but Miss Clark had to do a small but important commission for Mrs.
Stubbs, and was obliged to take it.
Then her sisters, whom she heartily despised--Tom being her
favourite--annoyed her excessively. Janey would persist in lagging
behind, and Minnie got a stone in her shoe and had to stop and take it
off and shake out the pebble; and then, of course, she had to stop also
to have her shoe tied again, and one or two people stopped to see what
was amiss, as people do stop when they see any impediment to the general
traffic in the London streets. "Making a perfect show of them all,"
Flossie said angrily.
And when they got home, Flossie not feeling quite so bad as when they
set off, Mrs. Stubbs and May and "_that_ Sarah" actually had not come
back. It really was too bad, and Flossie sat down in the schoolroom
window to watch for them with a face like a thunder cloud and a heart in
which every outraged and injured feeling capable of being felt by weak
human nature seemed to be seething and struggling at once.
If only Tom had come back, it would not have been so bad. But Charles,
the indoor servant, had taken him and Johnnie down to Seven Dials to buy
some guinea-pigs, and Seven Dials being a long way from South
Kensington, they could not possibly have got back by that time if they
had tried ever so. Poor Flossie!
So she sat and brooded--brooded over what she was pleased to call her
wrongs. She would not so much have minded not going out with the
"broom" if only she might have gone with Charles and Tom and Johnnie to
enjoy the somewhat doubtful delights of Seven Dials. That, however,
Mrs. Stubbs had resolutely and peremptorily refused to allow. So it
happened that Flossie sat in the window waiting for their return.
At last they came. She saw them get out of the carriage and disappear
within the house; she saw the carriage drive round to the stables.
And then there was a long pause. But they none of them seemed to think
of coming upstairs, even then. Poor Flossie kicked at the window-board
more noisily than ever, and in vain Miss Clark, driven almost to
desperation, cried, "Flossie, _will_ you be quiet?"
And then the door opened quietly, and May came in, looking radiant.
Flossie felt more ill-used even than before.
"Oh, you are here, Flossie. I've been looking for you _every_where,"
she remarked.
"Well, you can't have looked very hard, or you'd have found me," Flossie
snapped. Then with a fierce glance at the parcel in her sister's hand,
she blurted out, "You've been having ices!"
"Yes, we have," answered May; "but you needn't look like that, Flossie;
I've brought you back a great deal more than both our ices cost."
"What have you brought?" half mollified.
"Caramels in chocolate."
"I hate caramels!" Flossie declared, fearing, with the old clinging to
ungraciousness that sulky people have, that her last reply had sounded
too much like coming round, a concession which Flossie never made too
soon or made too cheap.
"Nougat?" said May, putting the caramels on one side.
"You _know_ I can't eat nougat; it _always_ makes my teeth ache!"
Flossie cried.
"Fondants?" May knew that her sister was passionately fond of that form
of sweetmeats. But Flossie would have none of it.
"I detest fondants!" she said, with an impressiveness which would have
been worthy of the occasion had she said that she detested--well,
prussic acid, or some pleasant and deadly preparation of that kind.
"Well, it's a pity I worried Ma for them at all," May remarked with her
usual placid air of disgust. "Perhaps, though, you'll think differently
after lunch. Come down, and pray don't look like that! Pa's at home."