"I wonder," said Susan half to herself, with her eyes fixed on the sea,
"what prevents it from running right over all the land."

Sophia Jane shrugged her shoulders.

"That is a thing _no one_ understands," she said, "so it's no use to
bother about it." Then with a sudden sharp glance to the left, "There
goes Monsieur La Roche."

Susan looked round and saw a tall thin figure just hurrying round a
corner, but she had time to recognise it before it disappeared; it was
the kind French gentleman.

"He's the French master," continued Sophia Jane; "such a silly old
thing. We all laugh at him."

"Why?" asked Susan.

"Oh, we can't help it. He makes such funny bows and he smiles so, and
says his words wrong. You'll laugh at him too."

Susan was silent. Somehow after this description she did not feel
inclined to tell Sophia Jane of her meeting with Monsieur La Roche on
the steamboat, and his kindness to her.

"I should think he did not like to be laughed at," she said at last.

"Oh, what does it matter," said Sophia Jane with much contempt, "he's
only a poor eggsile."

"What does `eggsile' mean?" asked Susan.

Sophia Jane hesitated; she did not know, but she would not confess
ignorance.

"It means any person who isn't English," she said.

For the rest of the walk Susan thought a good deal about the French
master. He had been kind to her when she needed a friend, and she had
felt grateful to him, and hoped she should see him again; she had
considered him a very pleasant gentleman. But now that Sophia Jane had
spoken so slightingly of him, and called him a "silly old thing," and
turned him into a sort of joke, she began to feel differently. She was
now rather sorry that she knew him, for she was afraid Sophia Jane would
laugh at her too, and she disliked that more than anything in the world.
It seemed easier now to join her in finding something ridiculous in the
"eggsile" as she called him, than to remember his kindness and
good-nature to herself and Maria. She hoped, therefore, that when he
came to Belmont Cottage to give his lesson that he would have forgotten
her, and would say nothing of the meeting on the steamboat. This first
day at Ramsgate had been full of so many strange sights and new people
that Susan had had no time to be home-sick, but when evening came she
suddenly felt a great longing to see some one she knew--Mother or Nurse
or Freddie, or even Maria. It seemed an immense while since sh