"The pretty little girl with blonde hair?" asked Marise, somewhat vague as to the younger girls in the lower classes. "What's the matter with her?"
"A perfectly horrible attack of homesickness, they say. The English teacher is up there—she's the only one who can talk to her; but you know how likely the MacMurray will be to put balm on a sore heart, eh? And you could make a wooden man split his sides laughing, once you get started. You could cheer her up."
Marise hesitated, looked in at the clock in the concierge's loge, and nodded. She started towards the door of the dormitory building, stopped and called back, "O là, the little Tollet, what's her name?
"Eugénie," said the other, "Eugénie Mille."
As she climbed the dark, winding, well-waxed stairs, Marise reflected that that didn't sound like an American name, and made a guess that, as had happened to her before, she would find that the "American girl" was from Martinque, or Peru or Saõ Paulo.
But it was English, sure enough, that Miss MacMurray was talking, as she bent over the sobbing blue-serge heap, on the narrow iron bed. She was saying helplessly, "There now, it's verra har-rd, I know, I'm far from home, mysel'," patting the heaving shoulders with one hand, and anxiously looking at her watch. She was due at a private lesson in ten minutes, and a private lesson meant five irreplaceable francs.
She welcomed the tall American girl with relief, "Ah, that's right, that's right, you'll know how to get her quieted down," and fled before Marise could protest that she did not even know the homesick child.
Rather at a loss, and very unenthusiastically, Marise stood looking down on the crumpled, untidy bed, and the mass of disordered golden hair, noting the fineness of the tailored blue serge, and the excellently made small shoes. They were unmistakably North American in their shapeliness. Nothing Peruvian or Brazilian about them!
What could you do for somebody who was homesick? She certainly did not know from experience. Nobody had ever done anything for her. She sat down on the edge of the bed, laid her arm over the narrow shoulders, and said cheerfully, "Hallo there, what's the matter? You'll run out of tears, if you aren't careful!"
At the sound of her voice the sobbing stopped abruptly. The girl on the bed started, dashed the floating brilliant hair from her face, and turned on Marise, blue eyes dimmed with tears. She looked exhausted by her passion of sobbing.