But I don’t think it will seem unnatural if you notice the effect of surroundings on delicate-fibred children; how easily they follow the lights we hold out to them, and how vibratile their little spirits are. There was no absolute want of child society at Dullerton, any more than grown-up society; but Franceline de la Bourbonais did not care for it somehow. She felt shy amongst the noisy, romping children that swarmed in the nurseries of Dullerton, and they thought her a queer child, and did not get on well with her. The only house where she cared at all to go in her juvenile days was the vicarage; but the attraction was the vicar himself, rather than his full home, that was like an aviary of chattering parrots and chirping canaries. Now that the parrots were grown up and “going out,” Franceline saw very little of them. They were occupied making markers on perforated card-board for all their friends, or else “doing up” their dresses for the next dinner or croquet party; the staple topic of their conversation after these entertainments was why Mr. Charlton took Miss This down to dinner, instead of Miss That; whether it was an accident, or whether there was anything in it; and how divinely Mr. Charlton had sung “Ah, non giunge.” These things were not the least interesting to Franceline, who was not “out,” or ever likely to be. Who would take her, and where could she get dresses to go? She hated perforated card-board work, and she did not know Mr. Charlton. It was no wonder, therefore, she felt out of her element at the vicarage, like a wild bird strayed into a cackling farmyard, and that the Langrove girls thought her dull and cold.