It is even worse than I expected!" she cried, with wrathful impatience.
"Worse than you--expected?
What do you mean, please ?" "Worse than I thought it would be--before you came.

The idea of those five men taking a girl to bring up!" Billy sat very still.

She was even holding her breath, though Mrs.
Hartwell did not know that.
"You mean--that they did not--want me ?" she asked quietly, so quietly that Mrs.Hartwell did not realize the sudden tension behind the words.
For that matter, Mrs.Hartwell was too angry now to realize anything outside of herself.
"Want you! Billy, it is high time that you understand just how things are, and have been, at the house; then perhaps you will conduct yourself with an eye a little more to other people's comfort.

Can you imagine three young men like my brothers WANTING to take a strange young woman into their home to upset everything ?" "To--upset--everything!" echoed Billy, faintly.

"And have I done--that ?" "Of course you have! How could you help it?
To begin with, they thought you were a boy, and that was bad enough; but William was so anxious to do right by his dead friend that he insisted upon taking you, much against the will of all the rest of us.