All this sounded like righteous indignation, but was only anger.  Annie was entirely in the wrong, and knew it; therefore she lost her temper.

Susy had an unusual amount of self-control at this time, merely because she had the truth on her side.  But her dignified composure only vexed Annie the more.

“I won’t stay here to be imposed upon, and told that I’m a liar and a thief; so I won’t!  I’ll go right home this very minute, and tell my mother just how you treat your company!”

And, in spite of all Susy could say, Annie threw on her hood and cloak, and flounced out of the room; forgetting, in her wrath, to take off Susy’s red scarf, which was still festooned about her head.

“Well, I’m glad she’s gone,” said Flossy, coolly, as the door closed with a slam.  “She’s a bold thing, and my mother wouldn’t like me to play with her, if she knew how she acts!  She said ‘victuals’ for food, and that isn’t elegant, mother says.  What right had she to set up and say she’d be Mrs. Piper?  So forward!”

After all, this was the grievous part of the whole to Flossy,—­that she had to take an inferior part in the play.

“But I’m sorry she’s gone,” said Susy, uneasily.  “I don’t like to have her go and tell that I wasn’t polite.”

“You was polite,” chimed in little Prudy, from the sofa; “a great deal politer’n she was!  I wouldn’t care, if I would be you, Susy.  I don’t wish Annie was dead, but I wish she was a duck a-sailin’ on the water!”

The children went back to the game they had been playing before Annie came; but the interest was quite gone.  Their quick-tempered little guest had been a “kill-joy” in spite of her name.

But the afternoon was not over yet.  What happened next, I will tell you in another chapter.

CHAPTER IX.

MORAL COURAGE.

Annie Lovejoy had not been gone fifteen minutes, when there was a sharp ringing of Mrs. Parlin’s doorbell, and a little boy gave Norah the red scarf of Susy’s, and a note for Mrs. Parlin.

Norah suspected they both came from Mrs. Lovejoy, and she could see that lady from the opposite window, looking toward the house with a very defiant expression.

Mrs. Parlin opened the note with some surprise, for she had been engaged with visitors in the parlor, and did not know what had been going on up stairs.

Whatever Mrs. Lovejoy’s other accomplishments might be, she could not write very elegantly.  The ink was hardly dry, and the words were badly blotted, as well as incorrectly spelled.

    “Mrs. Parlin.

“Madam:  If my own doughter is a theif and a lier, I beg to be informed.  She has no knowlidg of the cake, whitch was so dryed up, a begar woold not touch it.  Will Miss Susan Parlin come over here, and take back her words?

    “SERENA LOVEJOY.”