“I’ll write to her from London,” Lloyd thought.  “If we should get a sight of any of the royal family, how tickled she would be to hear it.”

The other name was Janet McDonald.  She was a sad, sweet-faced young teacher whom Miss Allison always called her “Scotch lassie Jane.”  “I don’t suppose she’d care to get a letter from a little girl like me,” thought Lloyd, “but I know she’d love to have a piece of heather from the hills near her home.  I’ll send her a piece when we get up in Scotland.”

The letter that Eugenia sent to Joyce was only a short outline of her plans.  She knew that the other girls had sent long accounts of their trip through Touraine, so hers was much shorter than usual.

“Papa has decided to send me to a school just outside of Paris this year,” she wrote, “instead of the one in New York, so it will be a long time before I see my native land again.  He will have to be over here several months, and can spend Christmas and Easter with me, so I can see him fully as often as I used to at home.

“It is a very select school.  Madame recommends it highly, and I am simply delighted.  A New York girl whom I know very well is to be there too, and we are looking forward to all sorts of larks.  Thursday we are to start to London for a short tour of England and Scotland.  Then the others are going home and papa and I shall go by Chester for my maid.  Poor old Eliot has had a glorious vacation at home, she writes.  She is to stay at the school with me.  We shall be so busy until I get settled that I shall not have time to write soon; but no matter how far my letters may be apart, I am always your devoted EUGENIA.”

CHAPTER X.

ON THE WING

“Who is going away?” asked Lloyd, one afternoon, of the girls who were sitting in her room, manicuring their nails.  “There goes a pile of trunks out to the baggage wagon.”

As she spoke, a carriage drove up to the door of the hotel, and Fanchette went out with the poodle in her arms.

“The Sattawhites,” answered Eugenia.  “There’s Howl and Henny climbing into the carriage, and, oh, look, girls!  There comes Mrs. Sattawhite herself.  I haven’t had many glimpses of her.  Isn’t she gorgeous!  You know they had to leave,” she continued, turning to the girls.  “I forgot to tell you what happened early this morning while you were down-town.

“I was up in my room writing to Joyce, when I heard a rumble and a running down in the back hall.  Somebody called ‘Fire!  Fire!’ Then somebody else took it up, and the old gentleman at the end of the hall, who never appears in public until noon, came bursting out of his room in his bath robe, his shoes in one hand and his false teeth in the other.  It was the funniest sight!  There was wild excitement for a few minutes.  One woman began throwing things out of the window, and another stood and shrieked and wrung her hands.