Bobs looked at her with an expression that she could not understand. Then, instead of saying, as she had hoped he would, that he had not done it, he merely repeated, “You don’t believe it? I’m glad.”
All the way upstairs to Mademoiselle’s room, Jacquette was asking herself what Bobs had meant by that response, and the question was still troubling her when the closing hour came that afternoon, and Mademoiselle began to distribute the monthly report cards among the pupils in her study room.
Jacquette walked to the desk slowly, dreading to see hers, and she was not surprised when Mademoiselle, in passing it out, looked at her reproachfully.
“My little Willard, I am sorry,” she said, gravely. “Will you stay and talk with me after school, honey?”
Jacquette scanned the figures on the card as she took her seat. She had fallen below, for the month, in algebra and physiography, and her standing, even in English and French, was near the danger mark.
“Sorry for you, dear,” Blanche Gross whispered, as the pupils rose to file out of the room. “Come up to the sorority rooms when Mademoiselle’s done with you, and tell us all about it.”
When Jacquette lifted her eyes, she found herself alone with Mademoiselle.
“Come and sit here by me, dearie,” began the French teacher, with one of those searching glances from under her dark eyebrows. “That is right. Now, chicken, you were meant to be a good little child. What can be the trouble?”
Her manner was gentleness itself, but it compelled an answer, and before Jacquette realised what she was doing, she found herself pouring out her troubles.
“I know, honey, I know!” Mademoiselle said, at the end. “I, too, have seen this wonderful ‘Fool-killer.’ There is one page with a very dreadful picture of a French lady who says ‘lambkin’ to the big boys!” She shrugged her shoulders ever so little. “That is mere fun! The part that worries me is, why did he not own up like a man when he was questioned?”