So when Miss Berners left Miss Stromberg and I alone, we had plenty to say to each other. I asked her if she liked the school and she answered, “I have been here one week, but that is long enough for an opinion. Yes, I like it.”
“What is it that you teach?” I continued.
“I teach the elegant French language to these slow, stupid English girls. It is incredible, but it is the truth, that they can not understand that French is to be spoken with the eyes, the shoulders, and the hands, as well as the tongue. One impertinent little girl as fat as an ox, told me it was not decent to talk in such a way, and that people would call her a mountebank, if she did so. I wish to swear a little, when I think of such stupidity.”
“French!” I ejaculated. “Is that all?”
“That is all. Many other things I could teach, but I keep quiet about them. I have seen that it is wise to do, but a very great folly to overdo. Maria Stromberg has learned many things since she began to teach. Will you not dress a little for the 76 evening? Put on a white dress if you have one. White is your color.”
“Will you not dress first?” I asked. “In this small room, two cannot dress together.”
“Dress, while I finish my stockings. I wish that the Strombergs of Riga and Uleaborg could take notice that their daughter is compelled to darn her stockings. Is there any more plebeian occupation? And my feet abhor a darned stocking. They will pinch me all the time I wear them.”
As I dressed we chattered, yet when I had finished my toilet, I was rather pleased with the result. But Miss Stromberg rose impetuously, threw down her darning, and pushing me into a chair, uncoiled the hair I had so carefully arranged.
“Mon Dieu!” she cried. “It is impossible. Look here!” and in a few minutes she had it raised in puffs, and knots, that added two inches or more to my height, and imparted to me an air of great intellectuality.
“How can it be?” I cried. “I do not look like the same girl.”