the whole good
work of the last quarter of an hour would have been undone. He was aware
of her temptation; he felt it in the air. She saw the warning in his
eyes. The moment passed.

"You won't go away, will you?" he said again.

"Not if you're good," she said.

IV

Half an hour later, when Mary and Helen returned from their walk, they
were addressed by Jeremy.

"She was crying because we'd been so naughty, and she had pains in her
head, and her brother was dead. Her brother was very strong, and he
used to row in a boat forty years ago. She told me all about it, just as
though I'd been Aunt Amy or Mother. And she says that if we go on being
naughty she'll go away, and no one else will have her, because they'll
hear about our having been naughty. And I told her about the workhouse
and the porridge and the yellow soap that the Jampot told us of, and it
would be awful if she went there because of us, wouldn't it?"

"Awful," said Mary.

But Helen said: "She wouldn't go there. She'd take a little house,
like Miss Dobell, and have tea-parties on Thursdays--somewhere near the
Cathedral."

"No, she wouldn't!" said Jeremy excitedly. "How could she take a little
house if she hadn't any money? She told me she hadn't, and no friends,
nor nobody, and she cried like anything--" He paused for breath, then
concluded: "So we've got to be good now, and learn sums, and not make
her jump. Really and truly, we must."

"I always thought you were very silly to make so much noise," said Helen
in a superior fashion. "You and Mary--babies!"

"We're not babies," shouted Jeremy.

"Yes, you are."

"No, we're not."

Miss Jones was no longer the subject of the conversation.

That same day it happened that rumours were brought to Mrs. Cole through
Rose, the housemaid, or some other medium for the first time, of Miss
Jones's incapacity.

That evening Jeremy was spending his last half-hour before bedtime in
his mother's room happily in a corner with his toy village. He suddenly
heard his mother say to Aunt Amy:

"I'm afraid Miss Jones won't do. I thought she was managing the
children, but now I hear that she can't keep order at all. I'm
sorry--it's so difficult to get anyone."

Jeremy sprang up from the floor, startling the ladies, who had forgotten
that he was there.

"She's all right," he cried. "Really she is, Mother. We're going to be
as good as anything, really we are. You won't send her away, will you?"

"My dear