hardly
spoke all tea-time, though Marie did her best to carry on a
conversation. When she had returned to work with Mademoiselle Loire,
the business of entertainment fell to Barbara, who proposed a walk
round the garden.

At first the visitor did not seem to care for the idea, but when the
mistress with her suggested it was too hot to walk about, she
immediately jumped up and said there was nothing she would like better.
There seemed to be few subjects that interested her; but when, almost
in desperation, Barbara asked how she liked France, she suddenly burst
forth into speech.

"I hate it," she cried viciously. "I detest it and the people I am
with, who never let me out of their sight. 'Spies,' I call
them--'spies,' not teachers. They even come with me to church--one of
them at least--and I feel as if I were in prison."

"But surely there is no harm in their coming to church with you?"
Barbara said. "Besides, in France, you know, they have such strict
ideas about chaperones that it's quite natural for them to be careful.
Mademoiselle Therese goes almost everywhere with me, and I am a good
deal older than you are."

"But they're _not_ Protestants--I'm sure they're not," the girl
returned hotly. "They shouldn't come to church with me; they only
pretend. Besides, they don't follow the other girls about nearly as
carefully. The worst of it is that I have to stay here for the
holidays, too."

She seemed very miserable about it, and Barbara thought it might
relieve her to confide in some one, and, after a little skilful
questioning, the whole story came out.

Her mother was dead, and her father in the West Indies, and though she
wrote him often and fully about everything, she never got any answers
to her questions, so that she was sure people opened her letters and
put in different news. She was afraid the same thing was done with her
father's letters to her, because once something was said by mistake
that could have been learned only by reading the news intended for her
eyes alone.

"He never saw the place," the girl continued. "He took me to my aunt
in England, who promised to find me a school. She thought the whole
business a nuisance, and was only too glad to find a place quickly
where they'd keep me for the holidays too. She never asks me to go to
England--not that I would if she wanted me to."

There were angry tears in the girl's eyes, and Barbara thought the case
really did seem rather a hard