And Sally found great comfort and delight in her lessons, which increased from time to time. She also sang in the choir and at singing-school, greatly to Master Sutcliff's help and satisfaction.
One day she picked up part of a newspaper in the road, and was surprised to find that not a word of it could she read.
This was late in the fall, after her Fairy Prince had again gone away, bound for Oxford and its halls of learning. And as time went on, not a particle of the dreamy, story-like charm that clustered about the young Lionel died out of her heart. If anything, it grew stronger. Nor was it strange that, with her fancy-loving nature, the lonely child had to set up a kind of dream-castle for her mind to feed upon.
Yet all was pure and innocent as could be, and, if not real, it yet was helpful. And if into her heart had grown a kind of affection for her Fairy Prince, who was so far removed from her in many ways, she felt that it must always stay just where it was, in truth a secret admiration for one far beyond and above her.
"Because," she said to herself, "we are oceans apart, not only because the great sea rolls between us, but because in every way he is so far away."
Now on this day when the strange paper came into her hands, Sally went slowly along, puzzling over the words, until she exclaimed:
"Oh, I know what it meaneth! The paper is in another language, and how I would like to understand it! I must learn it if I can find one to teach me, I must, I must!"
When she went at evening to Mistress Kent she took the sheet with her.
"Yes, it is a page of a French newspaper," said the mistress, "and although I can make out many of the words, I have not enough knowledge of the strange tongue to think of teaching it."
A new ambition, or eager desire, jumped into Sally's heart.