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permission to change your time for dinner?” asked Mademoiselle Zizi.
    Joss looked at me in surprise. “We have been having it when Monsieur Armand and the others have theirs,” I explained to her.
    “What others?”
    “Mauricette, Paul, Toinette, Nicole.” I was beginning to regret this childish helter-skelter week; it was partly regret that it was over, our happy obscurity was lost; Joss was
dragging us into the limelight.
    “Who said you could change?”
    Joss turned her eyes on Mademoiselle Zizi. Her voice was still gentle as she asked, “You want us to eat with your servants?”
    Mademoiselle Zizi’s neck went red. “Mauricette cannot manage with so many in the dining-room.”
    I should have accepted that, but Joss answered, “But Cecil says you often have sixty people for luncheon. Tonight we were only fifteen.”
    “I do not wish”—Mademoiselle Zizi floundered a little—“to have children with adults.”
    Joss’s soft answer came relentlessly. “But Monsieur le Colonel and Madame . . . I don’t know their name . . . had their little girl with them tonight.”
    “Do not argue with Mademoiselle Zizi,” said Madame Corbet to Joss with such venom that Joss was surprised again.
    “I—I’m sorry,” said Joss, “but our mother would not like it.”
    “Your mother left you in my charge,” said Mademoiselle Zizi.
    Joss could have taken refuge in being small, a child, but, “Could I?” asked Joss afterwards. “I am as big as I am.” I suppose she had to be, but I see now that what she
said was like a stone thrown into a pool; it spread ripples.
    “Your mother left you in my charge,” Mademoiselle Zizi said.
    “She left us in Mr. Eliot’s,” said Joss. “Shall we ask him what he thinks?”
    I thought Mademoiselle Zizi was going to slap Joss, but she controlled herself and, after a moment, “You may have your dinner with the guests,” she said, “but I forbid you,
absolutely forbid you, to trouble Monsieur Eliot.”
    After a while Hester and I went to the back steps. We did not want Paul to think we had deserted him, but, though he saw us and knew that we knew that he saw us, he did not come. He worked
    ostentatiously in the kitchen, and each time Monsieur Armand passed him he said, “Bougre de gâte-sauce! Marmiton miteux! Expèce de mitron de merde! Va donc, eh! Ordure!”
    I knew they were swear words, but what they meant I fortunately did not know; and I did not know, either, why he should be out of temper with Monsieur Armand.
    “What is the matter with Paul?” asked Hester.

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    CHAPTER 11
    “I F THIS is how grown people feel,” said Joss, “they are even worse pigs than I thought.”
    I said, perhaps tactlessly, “They know when to stop.”
    “Do they!” said Joss. “Look at Mademoiselle Zizi.” But I had to be fair.
    “Of all the grown-ups she is the only one who doesn’t seem to know,” and I sighed. “I suppose one has to learn even to drink.”
    I did not remember getting into bed, but I had woken to find myself under the clothes though dressed. “Dressed in bed!” said Willmouse. “Cecil, what have you been
doing?” It was not often Willmouse asked questions, and when he had seen how unwell I was he had slipped on his vest and shorts, brushed his hair and gone out. I think he kept Hester and
Vicky away.
    When I had gone in to Joss she too was in bed, the covers tucked carefully round her, her sandals placed neatly side by side on the rug, but she also was dressed. I felt so miserable that I woke
her and she was cross. Then, sitting up, she had taken in where she was, her crumpled dress, the smell on her hair and she gave a sound like a moan and shut her eyes.
    We felt our bones were stained now indeed and, too shamed to go down to breakfast, we stayed in Joss’s room. “But it wasn’t our fault,” I argued and used a phrase I had
read in Monsieur Armand’s newspapers, “They drove us to it,” but