“You ridiculous child! you misunderstand me quite.  The multiplication table is an arrangement of numbers.  I will give it to you to study.  In the meantime, come, how many do three threes make when they are added together?”

“I don’t know anything about threes,” said Hetty; “I only know about fives.”

“I think I must give you up for to-day,” said Miss Davis in despair.  “Phyllis is waiting with her French exercise.  Can you read French at all, Hetty?”

“I can talk French,” said Hetty; “but I don’t want to read it; ’tis quite bad enough to have to read English, I think.  Talking is so much pleasanter than reading.”

“You can talk it, can you?  Let me hear,” and Miss Davis addressed a question to her in French.

In answer to it Hetty poured forth a perfect flood of French, spoken with a pretty accent and grammatically correct.  In truth she spoke like a little Frenchwoman, and completely surprised her listeners.  She had been asked some question about walking in the Champs Elysees and now gave a vivid description of the scene there on a fine morning, the people who frequented it, their dress, their manners, their conversation.

Miss Davis put down the multiplication table which she had been turning over and stared at the little Frenchwoman chattering and gesticulating before her.

“There, my dear,” she said presently, “that will do; I see you can make use of your tongue.  Take this book now and study quietly for half an hour.”

Hetty felt that she had had her little triumph at last.  Neither Phyllis nor Nell could speak French like that.  She took the table-book obediently and sat down with it, while Phyllis made an effort to get over the shock of surprise given her by Hetty’s clever exhibition, and proceeded to attend to Miss Davis’s correction of her French exercise.

That afternoon Hetty was dressed in a holland frock of Nell’s, which, though Nell was a year older, was not too large for her, and joined heartily in a game of lawn tennis.  Her little success of the morning, when she had surprised her companions and their governess by her cleverness at French, had raised her spirits, and she enjoyed herself as she had never done in her life before, feeling that she could afford to do without Phyllis’ good opinion, and taking more and more pleasure in showing how little she cared to have it.

After this the days that remained of her visit passed pleasantly enough.  Hetty contrived to turn her lessons into a sort of burlesque, and to impose a good deal on Miss Davis, who was not a humorous, but indeed a most matter-of-fact person.  Every day Phyllis grew more and more disgusted with their visitor, who interrupted the even course of their studies and “made fools,” as she considered, of Miss Davis and Nell.  She thought Hetty’s pretentiousness became greater and greater as her first slight shyness wore away and she grew perfectly familiar with every one in the house.  Phyllis was sufficiently generous to refrain from complaining of Hetty to her mother or father, but she privately found fault with Nell for encouraging her too much.