‘And my fountain?’

’I am not quite sure, but I am afraid your cottages are on that stratum where you could not bring the water without great expense.’

Arthurine controlled herself enough for a civil ‘Good-morning!’ but she shed tears as she walked home and told her pitying mother that she was thwarted on every side, and that nobody could comprehend her.

The meetings for German reading were, however, contrived chiefly—­ little as Arthurine guessed it—­by the influence of Bessie Merrifield.  The two Greville girls and Mr. Doyle’s sister, together with the doctor’s young wife, two damsels from the next parish, and a friend or two that the Arthurets had made at Bonchamp, formed an imposing circle—­to begin.

‘Oh, not on Wilhelm tell!’ cried Arthurine.  ’It might as well be the alphabet at once.’

However, the difficulties in the way of books, and consideration for general incompetency, reduced her to Wilhelm tell, and she began with a lecture first on Schiller, and then upon Switzerland, and on the legend; but when Bessie Merrifield put in a word of such history and criticisms as were not in the High School Manual, she was sure everything else must be wrong—­’Fraulein Blumenbach never said so, and she was an admirable German scholar.’

Miss Doyle went so far as to declare she should not go again to see Bessie Merrifield so silenced, sitting by after the first saying nothing, but only with a little laugh in her eyes.

‘But,’ said Bessie, ’it is such fun to see any person having it so entirely her own way—­like Macaulay, so cock-sure of everything—­and to see those Bonchamp girls—­Mytton is their name—­so entirely adoring her.’

‘I am sorry she has taken up with those Myttons,’ said Miss Doyle.

‘So am I,’ answered Susan.

‘You too, Susie!’ exclaimed Bessie—­’you, who never have a word to say against any one!’

‘I daresay they are very good girls,’ said Susan; ‘but they are—­’

‘Underbred,’ put in Miss Doyle in the pause.  ’And how they flatter!’

‘I think the raptures are genuine gush,’ said Bessie; ’but that is so much the worse for Arthurine.  Is there any positive harm in the family beyond the second-rate tone?’

‘It was while you were away,’ said Susan; ’but their father somehow behaved very ill about old Colonel Mytton’s will—­at least papa thought so, and never wished us to visit them.’

‘He was thought to have used unfair influence on the old gentleman,’ said Miss Doyle; ’but the daughters are so young that probably they had no part in it.  Only it gives a general distrust of the family; and the sons are certainly very undesirable young men.’

‘It is unlucky,’ said Bessie, ’that we can do nothing but inflict a course of snubbing, in contrast with a course of admiration.’

‘I am sure I don’t want to snub her,’ said good-natured Susan.  ’Only when she does want to do such queer things, how can it be helped?’