"Never mind, mammy, I'll setch some slowers sor you," I said (every _f_
being an _s_ in those days), and armed with a pair of scissors I skipped
down to the garden.

I had chosen a bed of annuals because they were bright and fragrant, and
was beginning to cut some "gilvers" when Nessy MacLeod, who had been
watching from a window, came bouncing down me.

"Mary O'Neill, how dare you?" cried Nessy. "You wilful, wicked,
underhand little vixen, what will your Aunt Bridget say? Don't you know
this is Betsy Beauty's bed, and nobody else is to touch it?"

I began to excuse myself on the ground of my mother and Tommy the Mate,
but Nessy would hear no such explanation.

"Your mamma has nothing to do with it. You know quite well that your
Aunt Bridget manages everything in this house, and nothing can be done
without her."

Small as I was that was too much for me. Somewhere in my little heart
there had long been a secret pang of mortified pride--how born I do not
know--at seeing Aunt Bridget take the place of my mother, and now,
choking with vexation but without saying a word, I swept off the heads
of all the flowers in the bed, and with my arms full of them--ten times
more than I wanted--I sailed back to my mother's room.

Inside two minutes there was a fearful tumult. I thought I was doomed to
punishment when I heard the big bunch of keys, which Aunt Bridget kept
suspended from her waist, come jingling up the stairs, but it was my