So things went on, until both children were sent to a school for little children kept by a gentlewoman named Merlin, in the Rue de l’Homme Armé.
According to the fallacious circular which Mademoiselle Merlin sent to the folks of the quarter, there was a garden—that is to say, four broomsticks in a sandy court; and it was there, the first day during recess, that the innocent Leon burst into cries of terror when he saw the school-mistress, forced by some accident to interrupt her knitting, stick one of her great knitting-needles in her capacious head-dress. A “senior,” who was more familiar with her head-dress, explained the phenomenon in vain to Leon and Norine, for the boy, none the less, preserved in the presence of Mademoiselle Merlin an impression of superstitious terror.
She would have paralyzed his infant faculties, and have prevented him in the class from following the pointer of Mademoiselle Merlin, as she sniffled through her sing-song lecture before the map of Europe, or the table of weights and measures, if Norine had not been there to reassure and encourage him. She was at once the first scholar in the school, and became for slow and lazy Leon a sort of sisterly counsellor and affectionate under-teacher. Towards four o’clock Madame Bayard had the two children, whom the nurse had brought back to the store, placed near her in the glass office; and Norine, opening a copy-book or a book, explained to Leon the uncomprehended task or made him repeat the lesson that he had not understood.
“The good God has rewarded us,” Madame Bayard sometimes whispered to her husband in the evening. “That little Norine is a treasure, and so good, so industrious! Only to-day I listened to her helping Leon again. I believe that without her he would never have learned the multiplication-table.”
“I believe you, Mimi,” responded Bayard. “I have observed it. Things go on marvellously well with us, and we will portion her and marry her, shall we not, when she comes to a suitable age?”
IV.
Age comes—ah, how fast age comes! And behold! now in the glass cage of the shop there is a slender and beautiful young girl sitting at the side of Madame Bayard, who already shows some silver threads in her black bands. It is Norine now who writes in the great ledger with leather corners, while her adopted mother plies her needles on some embroidery.
Seven o’clock! Time that they came home, and the shop must be closed against the November wind which is twisting and turning the flames of the gas-jets.
Look at them now: Bayard grown stout, portly, and covered with trinkets, while Leon, who has just entered the first class in pharmacy, has actually become a fine-looking young fellow.