"Oh, mine was a clergyman, but he is long since dead, and my own mother
too. The father and mother who have taken care of me since live at
Beechhurst in the Forest, and _he_ is a doctor. It is my grandfather who
sends me here to school, and he is a country gentleman, a squire. But I
like my common friends best--_far_!"

"If you have a squire for your grandfather you may speak as you
please--Miss Hiloe will not call you common. Oh, I am shrewd enough: I
know more than I tell. Miss Foster says I have the virtues of my class,
but I have no business at a school like this. She wonders what Madame
Fournier receives me for. Oh, I wish father may come over next month!
Nobody can tell how lonely I feel sometimes. Will you call me Janey?"
Janey's poor little face went down upon her knees, and there was the
sound of sobs. Bessie's tender heart yearned to comfort this misery, and
she would have gone over to administer a kiss, had she not been
peremptorily warned not to risk it: there was the gleam of a light below
the door. When that alarm was past, composure returned to the
master-mariner's little daughter, and Bessie ventured to ask if the
French girls were nice.

The answer sounded pettish: "There are all sorts in a school like this.
Elise Finckel lives in the Place St. Pierre: they are clock and
watchmakers, the Finckels. Once I went there; then Elise and Miss Hiloe
made friends, and it was good-bye to me! but clanning is forbidden."

Bessie required enlightening as to what "clanning" meant. The
explanation was diffuse, and branched off into so many anecdotes and
illustrations that in spite of the moonlight, her nerves, her interest,
and her forebodings, Bessie began to yield to the overpowering influence