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I Say No by Wilkie Collins
page 29 of 521 (05%)
Having finished her breakfast, Francine decided on profiting by
this sensible suggestion.

The servant who showed her the way to the garden was not
favorably impressed by the new pupil: Francine's temper asserted
itself a little too plainly in her face. To a girl possessing a
high opinion of her own importance it was not very agreeable to
feel herself excluded, as an illiterate stranger, from the one
absorbing interest of her schoolfellows. "Will the time ever
come," she wondered bitterly, "when I shall win a prize, and sing
and play before all the company? How I should enjoy making the
girls envy me!"

A broad lawn, overshadowed at one end by fine old trees--flower
beds and shrubberies, and winding paths prettily and invitingly
laid out--made the garden a welcome refuge on that fine summer
morning. The novelty of the scene, after her experience in the
West Indies, the delicious breezes cooled by the rain of the
night, exerted their cheering influence even on the sullen
disposition of Francine. She smiled, in spite of herself, as she
followed the pleasant paths, and heard the birds singing their
summer songs over her head.

Wandering among the trees, which occupied a considerable extent
of ground, she passed into an open space beyond, and discovered
an old fish-pond, overgrown by aquatic plants. Driblets of water
trickled from a dilapidated fountain in the middle. On the
further side of the pond the ground sloped downward toward the
south, and revealed, over a low paling, a pretty view of a
village and its church, backed by fir woods mounting the heathy
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