And Mrs. Mulcahy it is!  Without waiting for an answer, that virtuous Irishwoman, clad in righteous indignation and a snuff-colored gown, marches into the room.

“May I ask, Mr. Curzon,” says she, with great dignity and more temper, “what may be the meanin’ of all this?”

The professor’s tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth, but Perpetua’s tongue remains normal.  She jumps up, and runs to Mrs. Mulcahy with a beaming face.  She has had something to eat, and is once again her own buoyant, wayward, light-hearted little self.

“Oh! it is all right now, Mrs. Mulcahy,” cries she, whilst the professor grows cold with horror at this audacious advance upon the militant Mulcahy.  “But do you know, he said first he hadn’t anything to give me, and I was starving.  No, you mustn’t scold him—­he didn’t mean anything.  I suppose you have heard how unhappy I was with Aunt Jane?—­he’s told you, I daresay,”—­with a little flinging of her hand towards the trembling professor—­“because I know”—­prettily—­“he is very fond of you—­he often speaks to me about you.  Oh!  Aunt Jane is horrid! I should have told you about how it was when I came, but I wanted so much to see my guardian, and tell him all about it, that I forgot to be nice to anybody.  See?”

There is a little silence.  The professor, who is looking as guilty as if the whole ten commandments have been broken by him at once, waits, shivering, for the outburst that is so sure to come.

It doesn’t come, however!  When the mists clear away a little, he finds that Perpetua has gone over to where Mrs. Mulcahy is standing, and is talking still to that good Irishwoman.  It is a whispered talk this time, and the few words of it that he catches go to his very heart.

“I’m afraid he didn’t want me here,” Perpetua is saying, in a low distressed little voice—­“I’m sorry I came now—­but, you don’t know how cruel Aunt Jane was to me, Mrs. Mulcahy, you don’t indeed!  She—­she said such unkind things about—­about——­” Perpetua breaks down again—­struggles with herself valiantly, and finally bursts out crying.  “I’m tired, I’m sleepy,” sobs she miserably.

Need I say what follows?  The professor, stung to the quick by those forlorn sobs, lifts his eyes, and—­behold! he sees Perpetua gathered to the ample bosom of the formidable, kindly Mulcahy.

“Come wid me, me lamb,” says that excellent woman.  “Bad scran to the one that made yer purty heart sore.  Lave her to me now, Misther Curzon, dear, an’ I’ll take a mother’s care of her.” (This in an aside to the astounded professor.) “There now, alanna!  Take courage now!  Sure ’tis to the right shop ye’ve come, anyway, for ’tis daughthers I have meself, me dear—­fine, sthrappin’ girls as could put you in their pockits.  Ye poor little crather!  Oh!  Murther!  Who could harm the like of ye?  Faix, I hope that ould divil of an aunt o’ yours won’t darken these doors, or she’ll git what she won’t like from Biddy Mulcahy.  There now!  There now!  ’Tis into yer bed I’ll tuck ye meself, for ’tis worn-out ye are—­God help ye!”