perhaps Mademoiselle couldn't do that. Ye can't bend so easy when
you're old, so she needed the bottle most."

"_Ma petite_!" cried Mademoiselle. "_Ma cherie_!"--and she would have
rushed forward and taken Pixie into her arms straight away, had not Miss
Phipps held her back with a restraining touch.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

PIXIE INTERCEDES.

"One more question, Pixie, and remember I place absolute reliance on
what you say, for you have given proof that you are to be trusted. You
heard Lottie's insinuation that you might have had some share in the
accident! Had you touched the scent-bottle at all that night?"

"I had not, Miss Phipps!" The grey eyes looked into the face of the
questioner with a steady light. "I never noticed it at all until the
girls began talking about it, and then said I, `I must have a look at
that bottle before I'm much older,' and so I did that very same evening,
but never a finger did I lay upon it. I put me hands behind me back and
just doubled meself over the table--like this!--looking at it all I
knew, but not daring as much as to breathe upon it, and from that hour I
was never within yards of its presence."

"I understand! But why, dear, have you refused to give us this simple
explanation all these weeks? It was surely only to your credit that you
had thought of Mademoiselle's comfort before your own, so there was no
reason for being so secret about it. Did you not see that it would have
helped your cause to have given this explanation?"

"I--didn't--like!" said Pixie, twisting her finger in and out in
embarrassed fashion. "It was this way--that first night you were all so
cross and so certain that it was me, because I had been in the room,
that I was shy about telling. You see Mademoiselle would have been
obliged to be pleased with me, and she wasn't feeling disposed to be
pleased just then, and it would seem as if I were trying to get off
blame, by boasting of what I'd done. I can't explain my feelings, but I
couldn't tell! The next day it would have been different, but Lottie
begged me not to say what I knew, and we never told tales of each other
at home. The boys would have been cut in pieces before they had rounded
on each other, so of course I had to give my word. It was very
miserable, because no one loved me, and in my home we have very
affectionate ways, the one with the other; but Lottie said it was only a
little time to the holidays, and after that all would b