‘As if we should care!’ said Florence, with a little sneer. ‘You can go and tell her if you like, that the ladies have no objection. We are not jealous, are we--of Mrs. Brown?’ This was not poor Florry’s natural tone, and the sharpness of it went to one heart at least--that of Miss Grey, who discovered what it meant: and startled the rest, who did not understand any meaning in it at all. ‘Don’t send Jim,’ said Mab, ‘let me go. I’ll tell her we should all like her to do--Lady Macbeth or whatever she pleases--and that none of the ladies would mind--not you, Miss Grey, I may tell her--for perhaps she thinks the young ones don’t count.’ ‘Don’t bother, Mab,’ said Jim hastily, ‘It is too late; even if she were willing we cannot change the programme now.’ ‘Oh, but I am going! I have a fancy for Mrs. Brown,’ said Mab, waving her hand. XL Mab left the others separating on every side towards their homes, and ran back to the schoolhouse, from which the children had all dispersed a little while before. She was full of her errand, in which there was a little sense of mischief as well as of pleasure, the one giving piquancy to the other. No doubt it was quite true that the ladies were not jealous of Mrs. Brown. It was to Mab the most amusing thing in the world that anybody should think so. Florence and Emmy, for instance, jealous--of a woman twice as old as they were, if she were the most beautiful and attractive woman in the world! How absurd it was! Youth has confidence in youth, in a manner as astonishing to the rest of the world as is the futility of that confidence in so many cases. And to a girl of seventeen a woman of forty is so entirely out of any sort of competition with herself that the suggestion is too ridiculous to be taken into the mind at all. Mrs. FitzStephen, perhaps, or Aunt Jane might be jealous of Mrs. Brown, but then they had nothing to do with it: and it was still more absurd to think that these good ladies could have anything in hand that would make it possible for jealousy to come in. All this ran through Mab’s cheerful mind as she went back, not noting the half-alarmed, half-displeased look which Jim threw after her, and his hesitating step in advance, as if he would have gone too. It was an exceedingly good joke to Mab, for though, of course, the ladies were not jealous, they would no doubt be much surprised to see Mrs. Brown appear--surprised, and perhaps not quite pleased. It was not that they habitually looked down upon the schoolmistress--even Mab in her short memory knew of some who had been much petted by the gentry in Watcham. There was one girl, who was delicate, and who was as much thought of as if she had been a princess in disguise, all ‘the best people’ uniting to spoil her, Mab thought, who, being more on this young woman’s level, saw things with a clear eye. But Mrs. Brown was not a favourite though nobody could tell why. She had seen better days, which was nothing