The prayer-bell rang insistently. "What would she like to talk about, do you think?" asked Joey desperately, catching at Noreen's sleeve; "the War?"
"Try the Franco-German affair; she was probably a blushing thing in a crinoline about that time—she'll enjoy telling us about it if we can only get her started."
"I'll try," Joey said valiantly and breathlessly upon the stairs, and she worried out the French for her request during breakfast.
Maddy met Remove II. B at nine o'clock precisely. Joey watched her mount the daïs with a sinking heart. She was a little lady, who made no pretence of being anything but elderly, with a dried-up skin that pouched under her black eyes, and the rather dusty "front" upon which the girls had commented did not match the hair at the back of her small well-set head. She was shabbily dressed, and all the little air of distinction with which she wore her clothes could not make them becoming. Joey decided that she should not like Mademoiselle de Lavernais.
Mademoiselle wasted no time in preliminaries. She said "Good-morning" to her class in clear, ringing accents, and they responded very properly. Then the real business began. In rapid French she mentioned that she hoped to hear much interesting conversation from the Form this morning, and—"Barbara, we should all like to learn your opinion on the Channel Tunnel."
Barbara became pink. "Je crois—bien—que c'est une bonne chose pour lesquels qui souffre de mal de mer," she blundered unhappily.
Mademoiselle threw up her hands in horror.
"Is it that I am taking the babies of the kindergarten?" she inquired. "How often am I to tell you that you nefare, nefare translate literally from the English idiom to the French. Noreen, let me hear you."
Noreen cast an agonised appeal on Joey. "What I think about the Channel Tunnel, Mademoiselle?" she asked.
"En Français, si'l vous plaît, mon enfant."