Plainly she was no common girl.
"I bet you'll be all right in the big city," he said.
"Of course I will," said the girl.
She spat between her teeth with a fine artistry.

In truth she was spitting rather often, and had more than once seemed to strangle, but she held her weed jauntily between the first and second fingers and contrived an air of relish for it.
"Anyway," she went on, "it'll be better than here where I suffered so terribly with everybody making the vilest scenes about any little thing that happened.

After they find it's too late they'll begin to wish they'd acted kinder.

But I won't ever come back, not if they beg me to with tears streaming down their faces, after the vile way they acted; saying maybe I could have a baby brother after Harvey D.got that stepmother, but nothing was ever done about it, and just because I tried to hide Mrs.Wadley's baby that comes to wash, and then because I tried to get that gypsy woman's baby, because everyone knows they're always stealing other people's babies, and she made a vile scene, too, and everyone tortured me beyond endurance." This was interesting.

It left the twins wishing to ask questions.
"Did that stepmother beat you good ?" again demanded Merle.
"Well, not the way Ben Blunt's stepmother did, but she wanted to know what I meant by it and all like that.