‘Well said!’ said the schoolmistress, laying down her fork. ‘Will you have a little of my ragout? I have taught my little maid to make it, and I think it’s very successful. I am fond of good cooking--that is one of the remnants, though, perhaps, at your age you will not think it a very romantic one--of my better days.’ ‘I should have thought,’ said Mab, ‘if you were like most of the people who have seen better days, that you would not have cared what you eat.’ ‘Ah, yes!’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘that is very true: but I am not like most of those people. I am not so sure that I regret my better days--or that if I liked I might not have them back.’ ‘Then in the name of wonder,’ said Mab, ‘why do you stay here?--don’t they often drive you half-mad, those little things that never will learn to spell, and that can’t remember anything if you were to say it to them twenty times in an hour? I would not be a schoolmistress a moment longer than I could help it, if it were me.’ ‘Then let us hope it will never be you,’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘The little girls are not alone in driving one half-mad, as you say. There are hundreds of things in the world that would drive you much madder if you knew them as I do.’ ‘I suppose you have known--all kinds of things?’ said Mab, looking with curiosity at her companion, whose eyes were full of knowledge too strange for the little girl. Mab had forgotten all about her object in coming, in the interest with which she looked at this curious human creature, who was like an undiscovered country, a world unrealised to her young imagination. She felt like an explorer coasting about in a little skiff to discover unknown headlands and bays of some quaint island far at sea. ‘Yes, I have known a good many kinds of things,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘things that would make the hair of the ladies in Watcham stand on end. I have been in a great many places--and, I am sorry to say, in a great many wrong places. I am not, to tell the truth, a sort of a woman for you to associate with, my dear young lady. You ought to draw your petticoats close round you in case they should touch anything of mine.’ ‘I don’t understand you,’ said Mat, greatly startled. ‘No; I did not suppose you would. You would be a capital confessor, for that reason; for I might pour all my sins into an innocent little ear like yours, and you would never understand them. Will you really refuse my ragout? It is very good, I assure you. Then have one of those _pommes au sucre_; I rather pride myself on them.’ ‘They are like apples of gold,’ said Mab, who was so young that a sweetmeat was a great temptation to her. ‘I wish they were in a dish of silver--for your sake; but here is a little Dresden plate, which is quite as pretty. And there is a little pot of cream. This is friendly, now, and gives me pleasure. Your cousin, Mr. Jim----’ ‘Do you know Jim?’ cried Mab, looking up from her apple, which was very good, with great surprise.