er, they engaged the
tidiest-looking one who seemed to know most English, and, feeling
rather pleased with themselves, entered the first gallery. Of course,
Barbara wished to begin by seeing those pictures which she had heard
most about; but the guide had a particular way of his own of taking
people round, and did not like any interference.

Indeed, he did not even like to let them stay longer than a few seconds
at each picture, and kept chattering the whole time, till at last they
grew annoyed, and Aunt Anne told him they would do the rest by
themselves. But it took some time to get rid of him, and then he went
sulkily, complaining that they had not given him enough, though Barbara
felt sure he had really got twice as much as was his due.

They enjoyed themselves very much without him, and saw a great deal
before lunch-time.

At the end of the meal, when Aunt Anne was going to take out her purse
to use the centimes in it for a tip for the waiter, she discovered her
preparations had not been in vain, and that the purse really had been
stolen. Perhaps, on the whole, she was rather glad, for she turned to
Barbara in triumph.

"There now, Barbara," she said, "if I had had my other purse in my
pocket, it would have been just the same, and now whoever has it will
be properly disappointed!"

They did not return to Neuilly until the evening, where they met the
rest of the pension at dinner. Besides two brothers of the Belvoir
family, there were a number of French visitors and one English family,
to whom Miss Britton and her niece took an immediate dislike. The
father, who, they were told, was a solicitor whose health had broken
down, was greedy and vulgar, and his son and daughter were pale,
frightened-looking creatures, who took no part in the gay conversation
which the French kept up.

After dinner, when every one else went into the salon for music, the
solicitor and his children retired to their rooms, which Mademoiselle
Belvoir and her brothers seemed to resent. The former confided to
Barbara, in very quaint English, that they had never had such people in
their house before, and Aunt Anne, who overheard the remark, shook her
head sagely.

"I would not trust them, Mademoiselle" (Miss Britton was English from
the sole of her foot to the tip of her tongue). "They seem unpleasant,
and I have a great power for reading faces." At which Mademoiselle
Belvoir murmured something about wishing her mother were back.