"I'm extremely glad," said Mabel, with much dignity and a great deal of emphasis, "that my child doesn't understand grown-up English."
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Mapes, smiling with sympathetic understanding, "we four older people had better talk this matter over by ourselves. Suppose you walk home with me.
"I think," said Aunty Jane, forgetting all about the saucepan that had led her to the Cottage, "that the orphan asylum is the place for that unspeakable child."
"Yes," agreed Mrs. Bennett, "she'll certainly have to go to the asylum."
CHAPTER VIII
The Fugitive Soldier
THE Cottage door closed behind the three excited parents and Aunty Jane. The four Cottagers, all decidedly pale and subdued, looked at one another in silence. It is one thing to confess a fault; it is quite another to be ignominiously found out. Jean and Bettie and Marjory were feeling this very keenly; but Mabel was far more troubled at the prospect of losing Rosa Marie.
"The orphan asylum!" breathed Bettie, at length.
"It's wicked," blazed Mabel, "to make an orphan of a person that isn't."