"And so Mademoiselle Virginia has taken the class. I am sure you must love her very much."
"Not as much as we do you, dear teacher," said Paula.
"Oh, Paula, you just say that to make me feel good; do you not?" and poor
Mlle. Virtud looked from one to the other of us a bit sadly I thought.
At this, Paula came over to the bed and placed her warm hand on the thin cheek of the sick one, as she said, "No, Mademoiselle; it is because it is true, that I said it You are our dear teacher, and we know that you have sacrificed so much and worked so hard to give us knowledge, and so that is why we love you."
"I did my fifty lines!" I burst out, "that is to say, Paula did twenty-five, and I did the rest."
"What's that you say?" and a smile of amusement passed over the thin features of the teacher, and yet a certain tender look came into her eyes as she said, "You poor little thing! I'd forgotten all about it!"
"Gabriel," she said, turning to the boy who had been examining us minutely, "these are the young ladies who have been sending you such beautiful flowers. You see, he loves flowers so!" explained Mademoiselle. "Poor child, he cannot walk, and so he has to stay here in this stuffy room all day long. Before I was ill, I was able to take him out in his little carriage, and sometimes we would go as far as the open fields where he could see all the flowers he wanted to, to his heart's desire, but now that I'm confined to my bed with this heart-attack, those little excursions have become impossible."
"Are you very sick, Mademoiselle?" Paula asked.
"Oh, I feel very much better today. I have suffered greatly. I must get better quickly. Madame Boudre, the principal, wrote me yesterday that she hoped I would be back very soon in my place in the class. Madame Boudre doesn't care to have sick people," and our teacher looked toward the window with its little white curtains and sighed deeply. Gabriel came near the bed, "Don't worry about that, sister; when I get big I will work for you and become rich, and then you won't need to go to school at all."
How many things I was discovering, I who thought that the life of the school-teacher was a bed of roses.