Читать книгу A Girl of the Plains Country онлайн

86 страница из 98

Having listened to a jerky sermon as to what would be polite to say to the visiting ladies, Hilda had decided that silence was the wise policy, so she had retreated as far as the hall with Burchie. She might not speak, but she couldn’t help hearing, and these tea-ing ladies—and in particular that friend of Mrs. Capadine’s from Ohio—had offended her deeply. They sat in the parlor, while here in the hall she played with Burchie, rounding up for his amusement cattle of twigs in pastures marked off by the pattern on the rug. No doubt the ladies looked at her and thought her a good child. They would have been startled to know that much of their talk was judged—and condemned—by the active brain beneath the damp, carefully smoothed down thatch of dark curls.

Burch refused to be interested in the roundup of twigs. He made one of his silent demands for the building blocks that he loved to set up and tear down, set up and tear down again. They were on the shelves on the other side of the living-room. As Hilda was slipping through to get them, her aunt stopped her.