"I will have an answer," pursued Mrs. Baines.
"What were you doing out in the town this morning?"
"I just went out," answered Sophia at length, still with eyes downcast, and in a rather simpering tone.
"Why did you go out?
You said nothing to me about going out.
I heard Constance ask you if you were coming with us to the market, and you said, very rudely, that you weren't."
"I didn't say it rudely," Sophia objected.
"Yes you did.
And I'll thank you not to answer back."
"I didn't mean to say it rudely, did I, Constance?"
Sophia's head turned sharply to her sister.
Constance knew not where to look.
"Don't answer back," Mrs. Baines repeated sternly.
"And don't try to drag Constance into this, for I won't have it."
"Oh, of course Constance is always right!" observed Sophia, with an irony whose unparalleled impudence shook Mrs. Baines to her massive foundations.
"Do you want me to have to smack you, child?"
Her temper flashed out and you could see ringlets vibrating under the provocation of Sophia's sauciness.
Then Sophia's lower lip began to fall and to bulge outwards, and all the muscles of her face seemed to slacken.
"You are a very naughty girl," said Mrs. Baines, with restraint. ("I've got her," said Mrs. Baines to herself.
"I may just as well keep my temper.")
And a sob broke out of Sophia.
She was behaving like a little child.
She bore no trace of the young maiden sedately crossing the Square without leave and without an escort.
("I knew she was going to cry," said Mrs. Baines, breathing relief.)
"I'm waiting," said Mrs. Baines aloud.
A second sob.
Mrs. Baines manufactured patience to meet the demand.
"You tell me not to answer back, and then you say you're waiting," Sophia blubbered thickly.
"What's that you say?
How can I tell what you say if you talk like that?" (But Mrs. Baines failed to hear out of discretion, which is better than valour.)
"It's of no consequence," Sophia blurted forth in a sob.
She was weeping now, and tears were ricocheting off her lovely crimson cheeks on to the carpet; her whole body was trembling.
"Don't be a great baby," Mrs. Baines enjoined, with a touch of rough persuasiveness in her voice.
"It's you who make me cry," said Sophia, bitterly.
"You make me cry and then you call me a great baby!"
And sobs ran through her frame like waves one after another.
She spoke so indistinctly that her mother now really had some difficulty in catching her words.
"Sophia," said Mrs. Baines, with god-like calm, "it is not I who make you cry. It is your guilty conscience makes you cry.
I have merely asked you a question, and I intend to have an answer."
"I've told you."
Here Sophia checked the sobs with an immense effort.
"What have you told me?"
"I just went out."
"I will have no trifling," said Mrs. Baines.
"What did you go out for, and without telling me?
If you had told me afterwards, when I came in, of your own accord, it might have been different.
But no, not a word!
It is I who have to ask!
Now, quick!
I can't wait any longer."