et me hear you now! I am a pretty good French scholar
myself, so you won't find me easy to deceive!"

"Perfectly, madam, perfectly!" cried Pixie, gesticulating assent. She
found none of the difficulty in settling what to talk about which
handicaps most people under similar circumstances, but poured forth a
stream of commonplaces in such fluent, rapid French as showed that she
had good reason for boasting of proficiency. When she finished, the
lady looked at her husband with a triumphant air, and cried--

"There! It shows how important it is for children to learn a language
while they are still young. It can never be mastered so well if it is
left until they are grown-up."

Then turning to Pixie--

"Yes, indeed, you speak French charmingly. I congratulate you, and hope
you may find it very useful. You are so young that you cannot have
finished your own education. Perhaps you are going to school in
England?"

"'Deed I am not. I want to teach instead. My brother is a very grand
gentleman, but he's in difficulties. He has a fine estate in Ireland,
but it is let, and he's over in London trying to make enough money to
get back again, and that's none too easy, as you may know yourself, and
if I can earn some money it will keep me from being a burden on me
friends. I've answered quite a lot of advertisements, but there was
nothing really to suit me until I saw your own yesterday morning."

"I see! May I ask if your mother knows what you are doing--if you are
here with her consent?"

Pixie sighed at that, and shook her head in melancholy fashion.

"I've no mother. She died when I was young, and the Major's horse threw
him two years ago, and I've been an orphan ever since. There's only
Bridgie now!"

"Poor child!" The lady looked at the quaint figure with a kindly
glance, thinking of the two little girls upstairs, and picturing them
starting out to fight the world when they should still have been safe
within the shelter of the schoolroom. "I'm sorry to hear that.
Bridgie, I suppose, is your sister? Does she know what you are doing?
Would she be willing for you to apply for a situation in this manner?"

"Maybe not at first, but I'd beguile her. I'm the youngest, and I
always get my own way. I told Sylvia Trevor, who was staying with us,
and she was very kind, giving me good advice not to do it, but it is to
be a surprise for Bridgie to help her to pay the bills. If ye want
money, what else can you