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Rh a frank testiness that pleased me better than her other talk.

"Because you are so young to be blasée about anything."

"I am seventeen" (a little piqued).

"You hardly look sixteen. Do you like travelling alone?"

"Bah! I care nothing about it. I have crossed the Channel ten times, alone; but then I take care never to be long alone: I always make friends."

"You will scarcely make many friends this voyage, I think" (glancing at the Watson-group, who were now laughing and making a great deal of noise on deck).

"Not of those odious men and women," said she: "such people should be steerage passengers. Are you going to school?"

"No."

"Where are you going?"

"I have not the least idea—beyond, at least, the Port of Bouemarine."

She stared, then carelessly ran on:

"I am going to school. Oh the number of foreign schools I have been at in my life! And yet I am quite an ignoramus. I know nothing—nothing in