Mrs. Tomkin-Jones was confounded, but she recovered herself. 'No, my dear child, I know you were left in charge of an ignorant person who neglected――――' 'I was sent to a Dame's school, but I did not learn French there. That matters not. You were, I think, alluding in French to my――to my――Mrs. Marley. You used some words; that was before we entered the shop. If they concerned me I do not care, but if they reflected on her, I _do_ care. I care with my whole heart and soul, and'――the tears were near filling her eyes――'I have heard you call her a person, a creature, a thing, and what you said about her in French I know not, but it was not civil or you would not have spoken it in a strange tongue. What did you say?' 'I really do not recall.' 'It does not matter. But, madam, consider this. I will not have Mrs. Marley spoken of, in English or in French, in a way that is not respectful. None but I know what she has been to me, nor how that there is no one in the world to fight her battles but myself. No one but I know how good she is, how true, how honest, how loving; those who snap and sneer at her are not worthy to buckle her shoes. A word spoken against her, in ridicule or in disparagement, I _will_ not bear, I _cannot_ bear. I cannot tell what I might say or do if I heard it again. But of this I am certain, I will throw all the advantages away from me which I might gain by being here rather than hear it again. I would rather leave the house and go back to her once more.' 'It does your heart credit,' said Mrs. Tomkin-Jones, who was really a good and well-meaning woman. Then Jesse burst forth: 'Let me kiss you. Now I know that I shall love you. If mamma says a word against her, I will stamp on her corns, and she has soft ones, too!' CHAPTER XXXIII IN THE SQUARE The day was pleasant, the sun shone, and the spring buds were swelling. In Bath vegetation is in advance of that elsewhere. The crocus was passing and the daffodil was coming on. Clouds, mountainous, snowy, were piled up in the blue sky. The sun was warm, in the garden of the square it was possible to sit out and enjoy it. The hills about Bath, and the houses that encompassed the square, cut off the cold wind. Mrs. Tomkin-Jones, because numbered as belonging to the square, possessed a key that admitted within the rails into the precinct where grew seringa and snowballs, was wintry grass, and where accumulated scraps of paper, the waifs of the street. By means of the key Winefred had admitted herself to the garden, and was seated on a bench enjoying the sun, occupied with thoughts the reverse of sunny.