This was so unlike what the girls expected after her exordium that there was a little cry of surprise, swiftly modified into one of cordial assent. ‘But,’ said the schoolmistress, ‘knowing that this is so--which you must never forget--I’ll tell you what this young lady would do. She would go after the man to his house--which most likely she would know: and I’m not sure that she would not stop and buy some things on the way--at the butcher’s, perhaps----’ At this the girls manifested a little doubt; while one murmured ‘Tea, teacher,’ and another said ‘Potatoes’ loud out that she might not be overlooked; at which the class, consulting Mrs. Brown’s face by a lightning glance, burst into a laugh. ‘Hush!’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘This is a very interesting question that is set to us--as good as a story; but you mustn’t laugh. The young lady would go to the man’s house, and she would probably see the children devouring the bread; and she would ask a number of questions--far more than she has asked you to-day, though she has asked a great many. She would discover there was no fire (supposing it to be cold, which it isn’t to-day) and nothing to eat in the house, and that the man was out of work and the wife ill and the children starving. She would immediately send off for all that was wanted----’ ‘Please, teacher,’ said Lizzie Jones, holding out her hand, ‘she’d give ’em a coal ticket, and a bread ticket and bid ’em send one of the little ones up with a basket for the pieces.’ ‘Well, perhaps she would do that. And when she had supplied their wants, she would take the man aside, and she would say to him, “I saw you steal that loaf at Mr. White’s.”’ There was a long breath and a cry of ‘Oh!’ from the girls, and Lizzie Jones, who was soft-hearted--or was it only that she was forward?--began to cry. ‘“Now,” the young lady would say, “come back with me and pay for it. You’re going to get work again presently, and the children shall not starve; but you must not have anything against you when you get work.”’ There was another very large round ‘Oh!’ from the girls, who turned their eyes with one accord from Mrs. Brown’s to Mab’s face. ‘I don’t know if I would do that,’ said Mab. ‘Neither do I,’ said Mrs. Brown; ‘but judging by what I know of your character, Miss Pakenham, that is what I should expect you to do.’ This happened on the morning of the day after Leo’s chase in the rain. Mab went home very soberly when the children were dismissed for dinner and in a very uncertain state of mind. She did not know how to take Mrs. Brown’s apologue, which already was being circulated through the village in a dozen different versions as a thing which Miss Mab had actually done, until it came to the ears of White, the baker, who contradicted it indignantly, and declared that he’d give a stale loaf as soon as look at it if the children were starving; but let a man off as stole it because he come and offered to pay up after was what he wouldn’t never do.