"Oh, if you know Miss Beverley, that makes all the difference," said Mrs Dawson. Her manner changed on the spot. "It is strange," she continued, "that you should come from the school where Miss Beverley is being educated, and it is still stranger that the sister of one of your pupils should be at the present moment occupying the room next to the west attic. She is an exceedingly pretty young lady, and remarkably well off. She's a governess to three little pupils, and they're well supplied with not only the necessaries, but the luxuries of life. Even jewellery of the best sort isn't denied them. But there--what a chatterbox I am! Jane, take this lady up to the western attic, and let her decide whether she will be satisfied to sleep there." Jane and the voluble Mademoiselle climbed the weary stairs up to the attic which, at the present moment, must have registered ninety degrees in the shade. Even Mademoiselle gasped a trifle as she entered the tiny room; but she was too glad to be in the same house with Brenda Carlton not to put up with some personal discomforts. She, accordingly, decided to engage the apartment; told Jane that her luggage of the most modest would arrive within an hour and went down to interview Mrs Dawson. "You do deprecate yourself, dear Madame," she said. "Your room you so despise is to me a haven of rest. It is doubtless what might be called hot, but what of that? It belongs to a home, and I _shall_--I feel it-- be happy under your roof." "My terms," said Mrs Dawson, "are--" Mademoiselle puckered her brows with anxiety. "You would not be hard on a poor French governess," she said. "She would make herself _tres-agreable_: she would tell stories of the most witty at your dinner table: she would make your visitors laugh and laugh again. She would instruct you in that cooking of _la belle France_ which you English know so little about. She would offer herself to market for you in the land of these broiling July days. You will not be hard on one at once so poor and so useful." "I charge the ladies in the front attic a guinea a week each," said Mrs Dawson. "But that chamber is _magnifique_!" cried Mademoiselle. "I asked your most delightful Jane to show it to me, and I was struck by its size and the beautiful draught that blew through it. Indeed, it is cheap--very cheap--to live in such a room in the very height of the season for so small a sum. But the western attic, Madame, you will not charge the poor lonely foreigner as much for the western attic?" After considerable chaffering on both sides, Mrs Dawson decided that she would give Mademoiselle the stifling western attic for eighteen and sixpence per week. This sum, of course, was to include her board. The French teacher considered matters carefully for a minute, then said with a smile: