Read "Phoebe, Junior" by Margaret Oliphant online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Well, young ladies! " said Mrs. Sam Hurst, "I left you very quiet, but there seems to be plenty going on nowadays. What a beautiful moon there was last night! I put up my window to look at it, and all at once I found there was a party going on below. Quite a fête champêtre. I have newly come from abroad, you know, and it seemed quite congenial. I actually rubbed my eyes, and said to myself, ‘I can't have come home. It's Boulogne still, it isn't Carlingford!"
"There was no company," said Ursula with dignity; "there was only our own party. A friend of Reginald's and a friend of mine join us often in the evening, and there is papa's pupil -- if you call that a party. We are just as quiet as when you went away. We never invite strangers. We are as much by ourselves as ever."