Some proportion of the girls at Cliff House were drawn from the tradesman class of two or three neighbouring towns.

Their tradesmen papas were sometimes ready to deal on favourable terms with Miss Frederick for the supply of her establishment; in which case the young ladies concerned evidently felt themselves very much at home, and occasionally gave themselves airs which alternately mystified and enraged a little spitfire outsider like Marcella Boyce.

Even at ten years old she perfectly understood that she was one of the Boyces of Brookshire, and that her great-uncle had been a famous Speaker of the House of Commons.

The portrait of this great-uncle had hung in the dining room of that pretty London house which now seemed so far away; her father had again and again pointed it out to the child, and taught her to be proud of it; and more than once her childish eye had been caught by the likeness between it and an old grey-haired gentleman who occasionally came to see them, and whom she called "Grandpapa." Through one influence and another she had drawn the glory of it, and the dignity of her race generally, into her childish blood.
There they were now--the glory and the dignity--a feverish leaven, driving her perpetually into the most crude and ridiculous outbreaks, which could lead to nothing but humiliation.
"I wish my great-uncle were here! _He'd_ make you remember--you great--you great--big bully you!"-- she shrieked on one occasion when she had been defying a big girl in authority, and the big girl--the stout and comely daughter of a local ironmonger--had been successfully asserting herself.
The big girl opened her eyes wide and laughed.
"_Your_ great-uncle! Upon my word! And who may he be, miss?
If it comes to that, I'd like to show _my_ great-uncle David how you've scratched my wrist.

He'd give it you.