The indictments become more serious. Marie Thérèse, twice impertinent to a mistress, taking no trouble over her lessons, worst of all, taking no trouble to cure that trick of which we have complained so often—sitting with her knees crossed.
"Even in the chapel, Ma Mère Supérieure."
This is very bad! It is unladylike, it is against all rules, it is extremely immodest.... And what an example!
Marie Thérèse, says the Superior decisively, can abandon all hope of obtaining the green ribbon of an aspirante enfant de Marie until she has reformed her ways. The mention of a première in literature gains no approving smile from any one and Marie Thérèse sits down in tears.
Gabrielle, Marthe, Sadie—all through the three classes of the moyenne division of the school, with very few stainless reports and two or three disastrous ones.
Then les grandes. The first of these, in the lowest section, is a name to which the reader, a French woman, always takes exception. She finally compresses her lips and renders it as: "Kevinnie!"
Queenie is always cool and unmoved as she stands up, and Alex always looks at her. At this particular séance, the April one, she took her glances more or less surreptitiously, miserably aware that she had not enough self-control to refrain from them and so avoid risking a rebuke later on.
Queenie held no première. She was always last in her form, undistinguished at music, drawing, needlework, anything requiring application or talent alike. But her perfectly serene complacency was more or less justified by the exaggerated applause of her companions at her faultless "conduct" marks and the assurance of her class-mistress, always given readily, that she was "très docile, très appliquée."
Queenie's popularity was independent of anything extraneous to herself.
The Superior leant forward and asked a question in a low voice.