Will they kindly stand up ?" Blushing considerably Irene rose to her feet, in company with the dark-eyed damsel who had crossed in the same steamer with her from Naples, and the fair-haired child whom she had privately christened Little Flaxen.
"Name and nationality ?" demanded Rachel, pencil and note-book in hand.
She wrote down Irene Beverley, British, without further comment; the fact was evidently too obvious for discussion.

At "Mabel Hughes, Australian, born in Patagonia," she demurred slightly, and she hesitated altogether at "Desiree Legrand." "_That's_ not English!" she objected.

"We don't reckon to take Frenchies here, you know!" "But I'm _not_ French," came the high-pitched voice of the little, fair-haired girl.

"I'm as English as anybody.

I am _indeed_!" "Then why have you got a French name ?" "Legrand isn't French--we come from Jersey." "Very much on the borderland," sniffed Rachel.