"Oh no," cried Bessie, much amazed. "I have a mother who is not really my mother, but she is as good as if she were."
"Then she is not like mine. Are women all alike? Hush! there is Miss Foster at the door--_listening_.... She is gone now; she didn't peep in.... Tell me, do you hear anything vulgar in my speech?"
"No--it is plain enough." It was a question odd and unexpected, and Bessie had to think before she answered it.
Her questioner mistook her reflection for hesitation, and seemed disappointed. "Ah, but you do," said she, "though you don't like to tell me so. It is provincial, very provincial, Miss Foster admits.... Next week, when the young ladies come back, I shall wish myself more than ever with father."
"What for? don't you like school?" Bessie was growing deeply interested in these random revelations.
"No. How should I? I don't belong to them. Everybody slights me but madame. Miss Hiloe has set me down as quite _common_. It is so dreadful!"
Bessie's heart had begun to beat very hard. "Is it?" said she in a tone of apprehension. "Do they profess to despise you?"
"More than that--they _do_ despise me; they don't know how to scorn me enough. But you are not _common_, so why should you be afraid? My father is a master-mariner--John Fricker of Great Yarmouth. What is yours?"
"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.