"Ma'm'selle, didn't you say we could go to the park again, if we were good?" said Tom, looking up from a smeary attempt to get a simple addition sum "to prove," and sucking his pencil doubtfully as he surveyed the result.
"Don't want to go to the park; want to go to the shops an' spend my shilling," exclaimed Floss, dropping a prodigious blot upon his copy of capital "B's," and instantly smearing it over the page with his arm.
"S'all go to the park, I s'all! Wants to see the ducks, pour fings, an' the nice man," cried Maggie, as usual completing the trio, and screwing up her face over the mysteries of "a, b, ab."
"Can't we go, Ma'm'selle?" demanded Tom.
"Go where?" asked Alexia. She had been leaning against the window-frame, staring out blankly. Her face was paler than usual, the lines of the mouth more rigid, her hair even more coldly absent and abstracted. Her pupils had spoken to her half a dozen times, and she had not heard them, would not have heard them now, had not Tom tugged impatiently at her gown.
"Why, to the park, as we did last week? Can't we go?"
"I don't know; we will see. Get on with your lessons now. What is that?
Come in."
A tap had sounded at the door, which was now opened, and the Doctor entered. The children scrambled down from their seats and ran to him. Miss Boucheafen, turning from the window, arched her straight brows with an expression of questioning surprise. For Doctor Brudenell to appear in the school-room at that hour in the morning was an unprecedented event.
"Good-morning, Mademoiselle." He took the cold, carelessly-yielded hand into his own for a moment. "Don't let me disturb you. I simply came up to express my hope that you were not alarmed last night."
"Alarmed?" echoed Alexia.