“I am so sorry, Alice, because you see, dearie, you must go right home after it, and that means you will miss the first and second period—both recitations for you—and that means”—lingeringly and lovingly—“that means two—little—zeros! And you see, Alice, that it always pays, in Mademoiselle’s room, for her dear little peacocks to do everything just at the right little minute, because, if they don’t, it means t-r-o-t, trot!”
She pointed a tiny finger at the door, and, to Jacquette’s wondering amazement, tall Alice meekly departed.
As the door closed behind her, Mademoiselle assumed a meditative expression. “There are three people talking in this room at present,” she said softly, addressing a distant spot on the ceiling. “I am one of them; I wonder who the other two could be! Chester!” she added, suddenly, fixing her eyes on a corner of the room where a sly whispering was in progress. “Take your books, honey, and come to this row at once. No, not there,” she demurred, as the big, broad-shouldered fellow sheepishly obeyed. “I reserve those seats for my French class, and if you should be studying there, and I should imagine you were one of my French class who was not paying attention, you might get your sweet little ears boxed! Now, as I was about to say, when I was so rudely interrupted——”
But the things Mademoiselle wished to say had to be postponed, for the bell sounded, and the pupils of her second year French class—some from her own room, and some from other rooms—began to assemble in the front rows. Louise gave Jacquette’s hand a farewell squeeze, and hurried away to a class of her own on the upper floor, while Jacquette, left alone for the first time, shyly took her place among Mademoiselle’s pupils, wondering, as she did so, whether she was likely to get her “sweet little ears boxed” by sitting at the wrong desk.
The French recitation proved to be a taking of stock, by Mademoiselle, of her class’s stage of advancement, but it served, at the same time, to fix in the minds of those who had not worked with her before, the necessity of keeping eyes and ears open.
Early in the hour, she called on Arline Grant, a much be-curled young lady, to give the rule under which a certain word preceded the verb in a French sentence they were discussing.
Arline was silent.
“Class,” said Mademoiselle, “We will sing for Arline a little song that we learned at the beginning of our first year in French. All together, ready! First verse” (chanting): “Pronoun objects come before the verb! Second verse: Pronoun objects come before the verb! Third verse: Pronoun objects come before the verb! Chorus: Pronoun objects come before the verb! Now, Arline, do you know the little rule, my pet?”
Arline gave it.
“Triumph No. 1!” Mademoiselle exclaimed brightly. “We have taught Arline something!” Then she looked sharply at her book, and said in a surprised tone, “I notice ‘mon amie’ printed in the next sentence! ‘Mon’—a masculine pronoun—when the ‘friend’ referred to is feminine. A misprint, is it not? Scratch it out, everyone of you, and write the feminine ‘ma’ in its place.”