Explore "Hollyhock, a Spirit of Mischief" by L.T. Meade on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Hollyhock was a child who, with all her wildness, her insubordination, her many faults, bore no malice. She did not know the meaning of malice. The open look on her bonnie face alone proclaimed this fact. She was really sorry for Leucha, and did not give her own swollen cheek a serious thought. Of course it pained her, for Leucha had very hard, bony little hands, and she struck, in her fury, with great violence. But Hollyhock, as she termed it, would be but a poor thing if she couldn't bear a scrap of pain. Nothing would induce her to grumble, and although she bitterly regretted the punishment which lay before her of not going home on Saturday, she would take it, as she expressed it, 'like a woman of sense.'
Accordingly she got up early on the following morning, released poor Jean, and carried her back to The Garden. There she put her into the astonished arms of the old housekeeper, who said, 'Whatever ails ye, lassie; and where did you find the cat?'