hile the child knocks the remaining crust
against the wall to get the sand out of it, the dirt of the
paving-stone.

"What's your name?"

"Fouchette."

"Fouchette? Fouchette what?"

"Nothing, ma'm'selle,--just Fouchette."

"Where do you live, Fouchette? Do throw that dirty bread away, child!"

"Say, now, ma'm'selle, do you see anything green in my eye?"

The young woman seriously inspects the blue eye that is rolled up at
her and shakes her head.

"N-no; I don't see anything."

"Very well," said Fouchette, continuing her attack on the slowly
dissolving crust.

"Throw it away, I tell you!--I'll run and get you some,--that's a good
child!"

Fouchette stopped suddenly and remained immobile, regarding her
interlocutor sharply.

"Truly?" she asked.

"Certainly."

The child looked at what remained of the crust, hesitated, sighed,
then dropped it on the ground. The young woman hastily re-entered the
house and presently reappeared with a huge sandwich with meat on a
liberal scale.

"Oh, how good you are, ma'm'selle!" cried Fouchette.

Her blue eyes sparkled with pleasure,--her young mouth watered as the
sandwich was passed between the railing.

"What is that,--why, there is blood on your neck, Fouchette!"

The child felt her neck with her hand and brought it away.

"So it is," said she, sinking her teeth into the sandwich.

"Here,--come closer,--turn this way. It's running down now. How did
you hurt yourself?"

"Dame! It is nothing, ma'm'selle."

"Nothing! You are just black and blue!"

"Mostly black," said Fouchette. The world looked ever so much
brighter.

"You've been fighting," suggested the young woman, tentatively.

"No, ma'm'selle."

"Then somebody struck you."

"Quite right, ma'm'selle."

This was delivered with such an air of nonchalance that the young lady
smiled.

"You speak as if it were a common occurrence," she observed.

"It is," said Fouchette, with a desperate swallow,--"Podvin."

"Po-Podvin?"

"Yes, ma'm'selle."

"Person you live with?"

Fouchette nodded,--she had her mouth full.

"They beat you?"

"Most every day."

"Why?"

"Er--exercise, mostly, I think."

The half-sly, half-humorous squint of the left blue eye set the
sympathetic young woman laughing in spite of herself. The remarkable
precocity of these petites miserables of the slums was new to her.

"But you had father and mother----"

"I don't know, ma'm'selle,--at least they never showed up."