“I hope he will not while I am here,” said Desirée, with a little frown; “see! how pretty the sun streams among the trees; but I do not like Melmar so well as that white house at the village; I should like to live there.” “At the manse?” cried Joanna. “What is the manse? it is not a great house; would they sell it?” said Desirée. “Sell it!” Joanna laughed aloud in the contempt of superior knowledge; “but it’s only because you don’t know; they could as well sell the church as the manse.” “I don’t want the church, however--it’s ugly,” said Desirée; “but if I had money I should buy that white house, and bring mamma and Maria there.” “Eh, Desirée! your mamma is English--I heard you say so,” cried Joanna. “_Eh bien!_ did I ever tell you otherwise?” said the little Frenchwoman, impatiently; “she would love that white house on the hill.” “Did _she_ teach you to speak English?” asked Joanna, “because everybody says you speak so well for a Frenchwoman--and I think so myself; and papa said you looked quite English to him, and he thought he knew some one like you, and you were not like a foreigner at all.” The pretty little shoulders gave an immediate shrug, which demonstrated their nationality with emphasis. “Every one must think what every one pleases,” said Desirée. “Who, then, lives in that white house? I remember mamma once spoke of such a house, with a white gable and a great tree. Mamma loves rivers and trees. I think, when she was a child, she must have been here.” “Why?” asked Joanna, opening her eyes wide. “I know not why,” said Desirée, still with a little impatience, as she glanced hurriedly round with a sudden look of half-confused consideration; “but either some one has told me of this place, or I have been here in a dream.”