Mab had finished her apple by dint of taking large mouthfuls. She had felt that it would be something dreadful, ungrateful, uncivil beyond description to put it down and run away. So, though she was much troubled, she only hurried the more over the consumption of what was on her plate. When it was finished she put down the plate, thankful to have it over, yet feeling that even now she could not be so beggarly as to jump up at once and go away. ‘I wish,’ she said, faltering, ‘please, Mrs. Brown--that you would not tell me any more----’ ‘Oh, don’t be afraid,’ cried Mrs. Brown, with a laugh; ‘I shall not bring a blush upon that cheek. I have always been in mischief, but I have not done much harm. I go wherever the whim takes me. I am sometimes in the heart of the _demi-monde_--though you don’t know where that is--and sometimes in a great lady’s boudoir, and sometimes in a girls’ school. You may wonder how I got here; but my certificates were perfectly good, and no one had a word to say against me. The _demi-monde_, you know, either in London or Paris, has no connection with Watcham School.’ ‘Oh, I wish you would not tell me any more--please don’t tell me any more!’ cried Mab, rising up (though still deeply sensible that it was too abrupt after the apple), ‘for,’ she added, in her trouble, ‘I don’t know at all what you mean.’ ‘But my dear young lady,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘you have neither told me how you liked my apple, nor what you wanted me to do.’ ‘Oh,’ cried Mab, arrested and feeling all the weight of that sin against the hospitality she had accepted. Her honest little face grew crimson-red, and her eyes sank for the moment before those bold and keen ones that seemed to read her very soul. ‘The apple was very nice, thank you,’ she said, faltering, ‘I--never tasted any like it: but--mother will be waiting for me for her dinner--I--think I must go.’ ‘Tell me first,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘what you wanted me to do.’ Mab had very seldom been silenced or daunted in her life, or kept from saying out what was in her mind. For once she had been overcome--chiefly by the apple and its effects, the sense of familiarity and obligation thus brought into her embarrassed mind--but such an embarrassment could not last, nor was she cowed except for a moment by Mrs. Brown’s personality--potent though it was. ‘I wish,’ she cried, ‘you had not told me these things. You put a weight upon my mind, for, of course, I cannot tell them to anybody, and I shall have to carry them all about as if they were secrets of mine. It was not just or fair to tell me--when I can’t tell them again or free myself from knowing, or forget for a long time what you have said. And as for what we wanted you to do--it was when we thought you were only Mrs. Brown, a lady that was poor, and obliged to put up with the school to get her living. Which did not matter to anybody--but now--now----’