"Such a pity to be late the first morning," thought Norah, as she rose
to her feet with the others; but as the minutes passed, and still
neither the foreign gentleman nor his little girl appeared, she began
to think that perhaps Stephen was right after all.

"Oh, mother, _when_ do you think we shall see her?" said Norah, on
their way home from church that morning. "They've been here ever since
Tuesday, and we haven't seen anything of them yet. Don't you think
they will ever come to church here, mother--the little foreign girl and
her father?"

"I don't know, dear," said her mother. "Perhaps they will later on;
but father is going to call on Monsieur Gen (I think that is the
foreign gentleman's name) in a few days, and perhaps, afterwards, he
will be able to tell you something about the little girl."

But when the vicar called at the Grange a few days later, the strange,
foreign-looking servant who opened the door told him that his master
did not receive visitors; and as Mr. Carew walked down the drive he
wondered what reason the foreign gentleman could have for coming to
live at Haversham.

The last few days of the holidays went by very quickly; and it was just
two days before the elder children went back to school that they saw
their new little neighbour for the first time.

"If you want to see the little Spanish girl, come quick!" cried Tom,
throwing open the schoolroom door; and in a moment the others had flung
down their books and work and had followed him downstairs and out into
the garden.

"Hurry!" cried Tom, panting as he rushed across the lawn; and they
reached the gate just as a stout, elderly woman and a pale-faced little
girl, dressed in a quaintly-frilled black frock, paused for one moment
before it.

The child gazed solemnly at the group of rosy-faced, happy-looking
children on the other side of the gate; then she said something in a
strange language to the nurse, and they moved on slowly.

"What a _queer_ little girl!" said Ruth, as soon as the woman and the
child were out of hearing. "Hadn't she a comical little skirt?--all
tiny frills; and her hair looked so funny in those tight little
pig-tails."

"I think she must be French," said Mary. "Little French girls always
do their hair like that, in pictures--in two plaits tied with big bows.
And the nurse was dressed like a French _bonne_, with those long
streamers in her cap."

"She looks _so_ sad," said Norah. "Poor little girl! Did yo