ith great dignity and more temper,
"what may be the meanin' of all this?"

The professor's tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth, but Perpetua's
tongue remains normal. She jumps up, and runs to Mrs. Mulcahy with a
beaming face. She has had something to eat, and is once again her own
buoyant, wayward, light-hearted little self.

"Oh! it is all right _now_, Mrs. Mulcahy," cries she, whilst the
professor grows cold with horror at this audacious advance upon the
militant Mulcahy. "But do you know, he said first he hadn't anything to
give me, and I was starving. No, you mustn't scold him--he didn't mean
anything. I suppose you have heard how unhappy I was with Aunt
Jane?--he's told you, I daresay,"--with a little flinging of her hand
towards the trembling professor--"because I know"--prettily--"he is very
fond of you--he often speaks to me about you. Oh! Aunt Jane is _horrid_!
I _should_ have told you about how it was when I came, but I wanted so
much to see my guardian, and tell _him_ all about it, that I forgot to
be nice to anybody. See?"

There is a little silence. The professor, who is looking as guilty as if
the whole ten commandments have been broken by him at once, waits,
shivering, for the outburst that is so sure to come.

It doesn't come, however! When the mists clear away a little, he finds
that Perpetua has gone over to where Mrs. Mulcahy is standing, and is
talking still to that good Irishwoman. It is a whispered talk this time,
and the few words of it that he catches go to his very heart.

"I'm afraid he didn't _want_ me here," Perpetua is saying, in a low
distressed little voice--"I'm sorry I came now--but, you don't _know_
how cruel Aunt Jane was to me, Mrs. Mulcahy, you don't indeed! She--she
said such unkind things about--about----" Perpetua breaks down
again--struggles with herself valiantly, and finally bursts out crying.
"I'm tired, I'm sleepy," sobs she miserably.

Need I say what follows? The professor, stung to the quick by those
forlorn sobs, lifts his eyes, and--behold! he sees Perpetua gathered to
the ample bosom of the formidable, kindly Mulcahy.

"Come wid me, me lamb," says that excellent woman. "Bad scran to the one
that made yer purty heart sore. Lave her to me now, Misther Curzon,
dear, an' I'll take a mother's care of her." (This in an aside to the
astounded professor.) "There now, alanna! Take courage now! Sure 'tis to
the right shop ye've come, anyway, for 'tis daughthers I have