"No, Flip, there isn't. Anyhow, Mlle. Dragonet had a cable from your father this morning giving his permission for you to stay with Paul. She supplemented Georges' cable by one of her own saying that she thought it far better for you to stay with her nephew than for you to make the difficult trip to Nice. So I don't think you need worry."
"Thank goodness," Flip said. "I think I'd die if I couldn't spend the holidays with Paul. I just wish Eunice hadn't written the letter and tried to spoil things for me."
"Just forget it and enjoy yourself," Madame Perceval advised.
"I will," Flip said, and she ran upstairs to throw the scraps of Eunice's letter in the classroom waste paper basket. Erna was there before her, sitting glumly at her desk.
"What's the matter, Erna?" Flip asked shyly.
"I can't spend the holidays with Jackie," Erna answered and put her head down on her arms.
Flip perched awkwardly on her desk and put her feet on the chair. "Oh, Erna, why not?"
"My mother wrote Mlle. Dragonet and said she wanted me home for Christmas. She doesn't want me home at all. She sent me away to school because she didn't want me home."
"Oh, Erna," Flip said, her voice warm with sympathy.
"Both my brothers were killed in the war," Erna said in a muffled voice. "And I know mutti wishes it had been me. She always liked my brothers better. I was the baby and so much younger and I always got in the way."