Lottie!"

"The real Irish voice! She ought to be able to sing charmingly when she
is older," said Miss Phipps to Mademoiselle, and Mademoiselle nodded her
head in assent.

"I 'ope so! It is a great charm for a young girl to sing well, and she
is not pretty. _La pauvre petite_!"

"No; yet the father is fine-looking, and my friends tell me that the two
sisters are quite beauties, and all the family wonderfully handsome with
this one exception. But Pixie is better than pretty, she is charming.
Would you be kind enough to go to the dining-room to see if everything
is ready, Mademoiselle? It is time we began tea."

Mademoiselle departed, and came back to give the required signal, when
the girls filed slowly across the hall, casting curious glances at
Lottie as she came downstairs. She was wrapped up in a long white
cloak, and had a fleecy shawl thrown over her head, almost covering her
face from view. She looked very dainty, and when the door opened and
they beheld her step into the cab, they felt a rising of envy which
could not be entirely removed, even by the sight of the luxurious tea
spread out on the dining-room table.

"Lottie is a lucky creature!" sighed Clara discontentedly. "She is
always going out. I wish my people lived near, instead of at the other
end of England. I am glad I am North Country, though; I don't like
Southerners! I agree with Tennyson--

"`True, and firm, and tender is the North;
False, and fair, and smiling is the South.'"

"It isn't false; it's sweet!"

"It _is_ false, I tell you! False, and fair, and--"

"Sweet, and fair, and--"

"Ask Miss Phipps, then, if you won't believe me. Oh, I say, look at the
icing on the cake! We didn't have icing last time. Doesn't the table
look nice? I do think it is sweet of Miss Phipps to take so much
trouble. Sit by me, and we will get hold of Pixie, and make her tell us
stories. It makes me laugh just to hear that child talk. Her brogue
doesn't get a bit better."

"I hope it never may. Pixie, here! Sit by us. We've kept a place!"

But Pixie shook her head, for she had been engaged to Flora ever since
breakfast, and was already seating herself at the other end of the
table. She did not speak much, however, during the meal, for experience
had taught what it had been difficult to express in words--that it was
not respectful to her teachers to chatter in their presence, as she
would do with her companions. She applied hersel