Gwendolyn amused herself by experimenting with the boa, which she festooned, now over one shoulder, now over the other. "Mademoiselle," she began, "what kind of a bird owned these feathers?"
"Dear me, Mees Gwendolyn," chided Mademoiselle, irritably (she spoke with much precision and only a slight accent), "how you talk!"
Talk—the word was a cue! Why not make certain inquiries of Mademoiselle?
"But do little birds ever talk?" returned Gwendolyn, undaunted. The boa was thin at one point. She tied a knot in it. "And which little bird is it that tells things to—to people?" Then, more to herself than to Mademoiselle, who was still deep in her letter, "I shouldn't wonder if it wasn't the little bird that's in the cuckoo clock, though—"
"Ma foil!" exclaimed Mademoiselle. She seized an end of the boa and drew Gwendolyn to her knee. "You make ze head buzz. Come!" She reached for a book on the school-room table. "Attendez!"
"Mademoiselle," persisted Gwendolyn, twining and untwining, "if I do my French fast will you tell me something? What does nouveaux riches mean?"
"Nouveaux riches," said Mademoiselle, "is not on ziss page. Attendez-vous!"
Miss Brown followed Mademoiselle Du Bois, the one coming upon the heels of the other; so that a loud crescendo from the nursery, announcing the arrival of the music-teacher, drowned the last paragraph of French.
To Gwendolyn an interruption at any time was welcome. This day it was doubly so. She had learned nothing from Mademoiselle. But Miss Brown—She made toward the nursery, doing her newest dance step.
Miss Brown was stocky, with a firm tread and an eye of decision. As Gwendolyn appeared, she was seated at the piano, her face raised (as if she were seeking out some spot on the ceiling), and her solid frame swaying from side to side in the ecstasy of performance. Up and down the key-board of the instrument her plump hands galloped.