“Oh no, mamma!” The little girl smiled.

“It seems you waited outside the barber’s while Jeannot was having his hair cut.”

“Yes, mamma.  I didn’t like to go in.”

“Ada didn’t stay with you all the time?”

“No, mamma.  First of all she took Jeannot in, and then she came out to me, and then she went in again to see how long he would be.”

“I’m sorry she left you alone in the street.  She ought not to have done so, and I’ve told her....  The King’s Road, with all kinds of people about!”

Mimi said nothing.  The new Madame Vaillac moved a little towards the fire.

“Of course,” the latter went on, “I know you’re a regular little woman, and perhaps I needn’t tell you but you must never speak to anyone in the street.”

“No, mamma.”

“Particularly in Brighton....  You never do, do you?”

“No, mamma.”

“Good-night.”

The stepmother left the room.  Mimi could feel her heart beating.  Then Jean called out: 

“Mimi.”

She made no reply.  The fact was she was too disturbed to be able to reply.

Jean called again and then got out of bed and thudded across the room to her bedside.

“I say, Mimi,” he screeched in his insistent treble, “who was it you were talking to?”

Mimi’s heart did not beat, it jumped.

“When?  Where?”

“This afternoon, when I was having my hair cut.”

“How do you know I was talking to anybody?”

“Ada saw you through the window of the barber’s.”

“When did she tell you?”

“She didn’t.  I heard her telling mamma.”

There was a silence.  Then Mimi hid her face, and Jean could hear sobbing.

“You might tell me!” Jean insisted.  He was too absorbed by his own curiosity, and too upset by the full realization of the fact that she had kept something from him, to be touched by her tears.

“It’s a secret,” she muttered into the pillow.

“You might tell me!”

“Go away, Jeannot!” she burst out hysterically.

He gave an angry lunge against the bed.

“I tell you everything; and it’s not fair. C’est pas juste!” he said savagely, but there were tears in his voice too.  He was a creature at once sensitive and violent, passionately attached to Mimi.

He thudded back to his bed.  But even before he had reached his bed Mimi could hear him weeping.

She gradually stilled her own sobs, and after a time Jean’s ceased.  And then she guessed that Jean had gone to sleep.  But Mimi did not go to sleep.  She knew that chance, and Mr Coe, and that odious new servant, Ada, had combined to ruin her life.  She saw the whole affair clearly.  Ada was officious and fussy, also secretive and given to plotting.  Ada’s leading idea was that children had to be circumvented.  Imagine the detestable woman spying on her from the window, and