Turquoise and Ruby by L.T. Meade — Read

Brenda and her three pupils had arrived two or three days before at Marshlands-on-the-Sea. It cannot be said their lodgings were exactly "chic," for the Reverend Josiah could not rise to apartments anything approaching to that term. He had given Brenda a certain sum which was to cover the expenses of their month's pleasure, and had told her to make the best of it. Brenda had expostulated and begged hard for more; but no -- for once the Reverend Josiah was firm. He said that his suffering parishioners required all his surplus money, and that the girls and their governess must stay at the seaside for five guineas a week. Brenda shook her head, and declared that it was impossible; but, seeing that no more was to be obtained, she made the best of things, and when she arrived at Marshlands just in the height of the summer season, she finally took up her abode at a fifth-rate boarding-house in a little street which certainly did not face the sea.

Here she and her pupils were taken for a guinea a week each, and Brenda had the surplus to spend on teas out and on little expeditions generally. She was careful on these occasions to be absolutely and thoroughly honest. She even consulted Nina on the subject. She was exceedingly polite to Nina just now and, at the same time, intensely sarcastic. She was fond of asking Nina, even in the middle of the _table d'hote_ dinner, if she had her pencil and notebook handy, and if she would then and there kindly enter the item of twopence three farthings spent on cherries, -- quarter of a pound to eat on the beach, -- or if she had absolutely forgotten the fact that she was obliged to provide a reel of white and a reel of black cotton for necessary repairs of the wardrobe. How Nina hated her pretty governess on these occasions! how her little eyes would flash with indignation and her small face looked pinched with the sense of tragedy which oppressed her, and which she could not understand.