e 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
of sleep. The little comrade, listened to no longer, ceased her prattle
and napped off too.

* * * * *

The next sound Bessie Fairfax heard was the irregular clangor of a bell,
and behold it was morning! Some one had been into the _dortoir_ and had
opened a window or two. The warm fragrant breath of sunshine and twitter
of birds entered.

"So this is being at school in France? What a din!" said Bessie,
stopping her ears and looking for her comrade.

That strange child was just opening a pair of sleepy eyes and exhorting
herself by name: "Now, Miss Janey Fricker, you will be wise to get up
without more thinking about it, or there will be a bad mark and an
imposition for you, my dear. What a blessing! five dull days yet before
the arrival of the tormentors!" She slipped out upon the floor,
exclaiming how tired she was and how all her bones ached, till Bessie's
heart ached too for pity of the delicate, sensitive morsel of humanity.

They had soup for breakfast, greasy, fl