“You see, I can't go away,” she said. “I've nowhere to go to. I've no friends, nor relations, and no one will take me for their children, if Mrs. Cole says I can't keep order.” “Then I suppose you'd go to the workhouse,” continued Jeremy, pursuing her case with excited interest. “That's what the Jampot always used to say, that one day she'd end in the workhouse; and that's a horrible place, SHE said, where there was nothing but porridge to eat, and sometimes they took all your clothes off and scrubbed your back with that hard yellow soap they wash Hamlet with.” His eyes grew wide with the horrible picture. “Oh, Miss Jones, you mustn't go there!” “Would you mind,” she said, “just getting me some water from the jug over there? There's a glass there.” Still proud of the level to which he had been raised, but puzzled beyond any words as to this new realisation of Miss Jones, he fetched her the water, then, standing quite close to her, he said: “You must stay with us, always.” She looked up at him, and they exchanged a glance. With that glance Miss Jones learnt more about children than she had ever learnt before--more, indeed, than most people learn in all their mortal lives. “I can't stay,” she said, and she even smiled a little, “if you're always naughty.” “We won't be naughty any more.” He sighed. “It was great fun, of course, but we won't do it any more. We never knew you minded.” “Never knew I minded?” “At least, we never thought about you at all. Helen did sometimes. She said you had a headache when you were very yellow in the morning, but I said it was only because you were old. But we'll be good now. I'll tell them too--” Then he added: “But you won't go away now even if we're not always good? We won't always be, I suppose; and I'm going to school in September, and it will be better then, I expect. I'm too old, really, to learn with girls now.” She wanted terribly to kiss him, and, had she done so, the whole good work of the last quarter of an hour would have been undone. He was aware of her temptation; he felt it in the air. She saw the warning in his eyes. The moment passed. “You won't go away, will you?” he said again. “Not if you're good,” she said. IV Half an hour later, when Mary and Helen returned from their walk, they were addressed by Jeremy. “She was crying because we'd been so naughty, and she had pains in her head, and her brother was dead. Her brother was very strong, and he used to row in a boat forty years ago. She told me all about it, just as though I'd been Aunt Amy or Mother. And she says that if we go on being naughty she'll go away, and no one else will have her, because they'll hear about our having been naughty. And I told her about the workhouse and the porridge and the yellow soap that the Jampot told us of, and it would be awful if she went there because of us, wouldn't it?” “Awful,” said Mary.