n the stairs,
and she was by no means sure how Jean would receive such an early
visitor. Moreover, she did not care that he should be disturbed, and she
went hastily to the door to moderate the noise of the girl's awkward
entry. For a wonder no word or look of hers could do this. Perine, who
generally was obedient to her smallest sign, was in a state of
uncontrollable excitement; she fled to Marie's arms, buried her rough
head there, sobbed her loudest, and presently, in the thick of
incoherent lamentations, pulled down her dress, and showed a heavy
bruise on her shoulder. Then she sobbed again, and implored Madame
Didier not to let them beat her.

"Come, come, come!" said Marie reassuringly, "tell me a little more
about this, and don't be a baby, Perine. Remember that you are a big
girl. No one will come here to beat you; if they did, good M. Plon would
not let them come up the stairs. Tell me who did it?"

She sat down on the stool as she spoke, and let the poor clumsy creature
rest on her knee.

"The man, the bad man!" howled Perine.

"That I hear; but what were you doing to make any one so cruel?"

"Perine only looking at pretty bright figures, mother; so pretty with
the light on them. 7639."

"What is she talking about?" said Madame Didier, puzzled, "7639?"

"Yes, yes," said the girl eagerly, and then she broke off again into her
lamentations, which lasted until Marie had bathed her hurt, and soothed
her by degrees. But when she proposed to take her to the _cremerie_,
Perine began to wail again, and it was evident that something had so
terrified her, that it would be cruelty to force her out into the
streets. Every now and then she let drop another word or two on the
subject of her fright; her poor disconnected brain seemed unable to
grasp anything as a whole; something would float across it and be lost.
Marie had grown apt at gathering together these cobweb strands, and
disentangling them, but now even her ingenuity was at fault, and the
number was the only point which stood out clearly from wavering words
about a man and a box. She gathered at last that somewhere or other this
number with the light shining on it had attracted Perine's attention,
that she went to look, and that a man pushed her away with a blow, and
with threats which had been strong enough to send her terrified from the
spot. Evidently she scarcely felt secure in her present quarters, and
piteously implored Marie not to suffer him to come