Whilst Madame de Fleury waited, she asked the boy to give her a full account of the manner in which the accident had happened.

“Why, ma’am,” said Maurice, twisting and untwisting a ragged handkerchief as he spoke, “the first beginning of all the mischief was, we had nothing to do, so we went to the ashes to make dirt pies; but Babet would go so close that she burnt her petticoat, and threw about all our ashes, and plagued us, and we whipped her.  But all would not do, she would not be quiet; so to get out of her reach, we climbed up by this chair on the table to the top of the press, and there we were well enough for a little while, till somehow we began to quarrel about the old scissors, and we struggled hard for them till I got this cut.”

Here he unwound the handkerchief, and for the first time showed the wound, which he had never mentioned before.

“Then,” continued he, “when I got the cut, I shoved Victoire, and she pushed at me again, and I was keeping her off, and her foot slipped, and down she fell, and caught by the press-door, and pulled it and me after her, and that’s all I know.”

“It is well that you were not both killed,” said Madame de Fleury.  “Are you often left locked up in this manner by yourselves, and without anything to do?”

“Yes, always, when mamma is abroad, except sometimes we are let out upon the stairs or in the street; but mamma says we get into mischief there.”

This dialogue was interrupted by the return of the mother.  She came upstairs slowly, much fatigued, and with a heavy bundle under her arm.

“How now!  Maurice, how comes my door open?  What’s all this?” cried she, in an angry voice; but seeing a lady sitting upon her child’s bed, she stopped short in great astonishment.  Madame de Fleury related what had happened, and averted her anger from Maurice by gently expostulating upon the hardship and hazard of leaving her young children in this manner during so many hours of the day.

“Why, my lady,” replied the poor woman, wiping her forehead, “every hard-working woman in Paris does the same with her children; and what can I do else?  I must earn bread for these helpless ones, and to do that I must be out backwards and forwards, and to the furthest parts of the town, often from morning till night, with those that employ me; and I cannot afford to send the children to school, or to keep any kind of a servant to look after them; and when I’m away, if I let them run about these stairs and entries, or go into the sheets, they do get a little exercise and air, to be sure, such as it is on which account I do let them out sometimes; but then a deal of mischief comes of that, too:  they learn all kinds of wickedness, and would grow up to be no better than pickpockets, if they were let often to consort with the little vagabonds they find in the streets.  So what to do better for them I don’t know.”

The poor mother sat down upon the fallen press, looked at Victoire, and wept bitterly.  Madame de Fleury was struck with compassion; but she did not satisfy her feelings merely by words or comfort or by the easy donation of some money—­she resolved to do something more, and something better.