"Their influence," it was Miss Lord who spoke, "is demoralizing the school. Mae Van Arsdale says that she will go home if she has to room any longer with Patty Wyatt. I do not know what the trouble is, but—"
"I know it!" said Mademoiselle. "The whole school laughs. It is touching the question of a sweetch."
"Of what?" The Dowager cocked her head. Mademoiselle's English was at times difficult. She mixed her languages impartially.
"A sweetch—some hair—to make pompadour. Last week when they have tableaux, Patty has borrowed it and has dyed it with blueing to make a beard for Bluebeard. But being yellow to start, it has become green, and the color will not wash out. The sweetch is ruin—entirely ruin—and Patty is desolate. She has apologize. She thought it would wash, but since it will not wash, she has suggest to Mae that she color her own hair to match the sweetch, and Mae lose her temper and call names. Then Patty has pretend to cry, and she put the green hair on Mae's bed with a wreath of flowers around, and she hang a stocking on the door for crape, and invite the girls to come to the funeral, and everybody laugh at Mae."
"It's just as well," said the Dowager, unmoved. "I do not wish to favor the wearing of false hair."
"It's the principle of the thing," said Miss Lord.
"And that poor Irene McCullough," Mademoiselle continued the tale, "she dissolves herself in tears. Those three insist that she make herself thin, and she has no wish to become thin."
"They take away her butter-ball," corroborated Miss Wadsworth, "before she comes to the table; they make her go without dessert, and they do not allow her to eat sugar on her oatmeal. They keep her exercising every moment, and when she complains to me, they punish her."
"I should think," the Dowager spoke with a touch of sarcasm, "that Irene were big enough to take care of herself."
"She has three against her," reminded Miss Lord.