And I will give you a kiss, my
little girl, to show you that I want to trust you to try to do right
about this."
She was stooping to kiss her, when Rosy stopped her.
"Thank you, mother," she said. "But I don't think I can take the kiss
like that--I don't _want_ to like the little girl."
"Rosy!" exclaimed her mother, almost in despair. Then another thought
struck her. She bent down again and kissed the child. "I _give_
you the kiss, Rosy," she said, "hoping it will at least make you
_wish_ to please me."
"Oh," said Rosy, "I do want to please you, mother, about everything
_except_ that."
But her mother thought it best to take no further notice, only in her
own heart she said to herself, "Was there _ever_ such a child?"
In spite of all she had said Rosy felt, what she would not have owned
for the world, a good deal of curiosity about the little girl who was
to come to live with them. And now and then, in her cross and unhappy
moods, a sort of strange confused _hope_ would creep over her
that Beata's coming would bring her a kind of good luck.
"Everybody says she's so good, and everybody loves her," thought Rosy,
"p'raps I'll find out how she does it."
And the days passed on, on the whole, after the storm I have told you
about, rather more peaceably than before, till one evening when Rosy
was saying good-night her mother said to her quietly,
"Rosy, I had a letter this morning from Beata's uncle; he is bringing
her to-morrow.
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