Mrs. St. John's usual self-control deserted her. That self-control, I mean, which enabled her to treat Benja and George with equal justice. Whether the morning's doings, the ovations to Benja, were really exciting her more than she could bear, or whether--but let that pass for the present. However it might be, she tacitly refused to interfere, and pushed Benja from her with a gesture of dislike. The boy, finding he could get no redress where it ought to have been afforded, ran back to Georgy and seized him just as he was flying to his mother for protection. The naughty, spoiled child, finding he might no longer retain possession of the watch, dashed it into a far corner, and they heard its glass crash on the floor, beyond the turkey carpet. Benja was by nature a sweet-tempered child: he had also been kept under by Mrs. St. John; but this was more than he could bear. He burst into a loud fit of weeping, and struck out at Georgy with all his might and main. Georgy roared, screamed, kicked, and tried to bite. As a tigress flies to protect its young, up rose Mrs. St. John, her voice loud, her eyes wearing that strangely wild look at times observable there. A passion, mad and fierce as that you once saw her in, in the presence of her husband, overpowered her now. As she had hurled Benja to the ground that ever-to-be-remembered day, so she would have hurled him this; but the boy was older and stronger now, and he struggled against it. Better that he had yielded! It might in a degree have appeased the mad woman who was upon him: and his strength was as nothing compared with hers. His little head was struck against the table, his costly new birthday-dress was torn. He screamed with pain, Georgy screamed with terror, and Honour, who happened to be near the door at the time, came rushing in. "Good Heavens!" she exclaimed, "what is it? What has he done?" "Me took his watch," sobbed little Georgy, in a fit of remorseful generosity. "Me not want mamma to hit him like that." "How can you for shame treat him in such a manner, ma'am?" cried Honour, indignantly, as her own passion rose; and she spoke to her mistress as she had never dared to speak before. "Poor orphan child I Nobody to protect him! How can you reconcile it to the memory of my dead master?" Mrs. Carleton St. John stood glaring at the girl, her hand pointed imperiously, her voice low now with command. It was as if some soothing oil had been thrown on the wounds of passion. "Tomorrow morning you quit my service, Honour Tritton? I never tolerate insolence, and I find that you have been here too long. Take that boy out of my sight." Somehow in the fray, they had all hemmed themselves into a corner, and the broken glass was cracking under Mrs. St. John's feet. Honour picked up the watch with a jerk which bespoke the temper she was in, clasped the sobbing boy tenderly in her arms, and went upstairs with him, meeting Prance at the dining-room door, as she was gliding in.