“Of course,” said Griselda, looking up fearlessly into Dorcas’s face with her bright grey eyes.  “Of course; why shouldn’t I?  I must ask her to give the little boy leave to come into our grounds; and I told the little boy to be sure to tell his nurse, who takes care of him, about his playing with me.”

“His nurse,” repeated Dorcas, in a tone of some relief.  “Then he must be quite a little boy, perhaps Miss Grizzel would not object so much in that case.”

“Why should she object at all?  She might know I wouldn’t want to play with a naughty rude boy,” said Griselda.

“She thinks all boys rude and naughty, I’m afraid, missie,” said Dorcas.  “All, that is to say, excepting your dear papa.  But then, of course, she had the bringing up of him in her own way from the beginning.”

“Well, I’ll ask her, any way,” said Griselda, “and if she says I’m not to play with him, I shall think—­I know what I shall think of Aunt Grizzel, whether I say it or not.”

And the old look of rebellion and discontent settled down again on her rosy face.

“Be careful, missie, now do, there’s a dear good girl,” said Dorcas anxiously, an hour later, when Griselda, dressed as usual in her little white muslin frock, was ready to join her aunts at dessert.

But Griselda would not condescend to make any reply.

“Aunt Grizzel,” she said suddenly, when she had eaten an orange and three biscuits and drunk half a glass of home-made elderberry wine, “Aunt Grizzel, when I was out in the garden to-day—­down the wood-path, I mean—­I met a little boy, and he played with me, and I want to know if he may come every day to play with me.”

Griselda knew she was not making her request in a very amiable or becoming manner; she knew, indeed, that she was making it in such a way as was almost certain to lead to its being refused; and yet, though she was really so very, very anxious to get leave to play with little Phil, she took a sort of spiteful pleasure in injuring her own cause.

How foolish ill-temper makes us!  Griselda had allowed herself to get so angry at the thought of being thwarted that had her aunt looked up quietly and said at once, “Oh yes, you may have the little boy to play with you whenever you like,” she would really, in a strange distorted sort of way, have been disappointed.

But, of course, Miss Grizzel made no such reply.  Nothing less than a miracle could have made her answer Griselda otherwise than as she did.  Like Dorcas, for an instant, she was utterly “flabbergasted,” if you know what that means.  For she was really quite an old lady, you know, and sensible as she was, things upset her much more easily than when she was younger.

Naughty Griselda saw her uneasiness, and enjoyed it.

“Playing with a boy!” exclaimed Miss Grizzel.  “A boy in my grounds, and you, my niece, to have played with him!”