She went up to her room to smooth her hair before dinner. Yes, it was very nice light-brown hair, with a golden shine; and her eyes were very clear and blue, and her skin very white, with a rosy flush; and her nose was straight, and the shape was a pretty delicate one. Amy really did think Mr. Wingfield was right, and had better taste than the people who thought her a poor washy, peaky thing, as she had more than once heard herself called.
She put her head on one side, smirked a little, half shut her eyes, and studied herself in different positions, till she heard one of her aunts on the stairs; and then, in a desperate fright lest she should be caught, she darted out so fast as to run against Aunt Charlotte coming up stairs with a basket of clean linen from the wash. There were three pairs of stockings rolled up on the top, and these tumbled out, and one pair went hop, hop, from step to step all the way down stairs, just as Father was coming in, and he caught it up and threw it like a ball straight up at his sister.
The confusion drove the nonsense out of Amy's head for the present. She ate her dinner, and then went off as usual for her visit to little Edwin Smithers, carrying him only a few strawberries, as she knew he always had soup from the Hall on a Monday.
For Edwin had not died. He had rather grown better than worse, and if the truth must be told, Amy had begun to get a little tired of him. He was not a quick child, and in this hot weather he often failed to do the sums or learn the verses that Amy set him.
To-day he was nursing a great piece of stick-liquorice with which he had painted a dirty spot on the central face in the picture of the number of the _Chatterbox_ which she had lent him. She scolded him for it, and he turned sulky, and would not try to repeat his hymn, nor answer any questions, and looked at his book as if he had never seen one before.
Amy grew angry, told him he was a naughty boy, and she should not stay with him nor give him any strawberries; and off she went, carrying away the injured _Chatterbox_, and never bethinking herself that the hot day and the weariness of the dull untidy room might not be the cause of the naughty fit, and whether it would not have been kinder and better to try to soothe him out of it.