“It isn’t false; it’s sweet!”
“It is false, I tell you! False, and fair, and—”
“Sweet, and fair, and—”
“Ask Miss Phipps, then, if you won’t believe me. Oh, I say, look at the icing on the cake! We didn’t have icing last time. Doesn’t the table look nice? I do think it is sweet of Miss Phipps to take so much trouble. Sit by me, and we will get hold of Pixie, and make her tell us stories. It makes me laugh just to hear that child talk. Her brogue doesn’t get a bit better.”
“I hope it never may. Pixie, here! Sit by us. We’ve kept a place!”
But Pixie shook her head, for she had been engaged to Flora ever since breakfast, and was already seating herself at the other end of the table. She did not speak much, however, during the meal, for experience had taught what it had been difficult to express in words—that it was not respectful to her teachers to chatter in their presence, as she would do with her companions. She applied herself instead to the good things that had been provided, and ate away steadily until she had sampled the contents of every plate upon the table, and could superintend the choice of her companions with the wisdom of experience.
Miss Phipps had drawn out a programme of games for the evening’s amusement, and later on the older pupils took it in turns to play waltzes and polkas, while the others danced. The teachers joined in with the rest, and it was a proud girl who had Miss Phipps for a partner, while Mademoiselle was so light and agile that it was like dancing with a feather, and Fraulein felt like a heavy log lying against one’s arm. Then everyone sat down and puffed and panted, while Jeanie, the Scotch girl, danced a Highland Fling, and when Pixie called out an appropriate “Hoch! Hoch!” the teachers laughed as heartily as the girls; for be it well understood there are things which are allowed on term-holiday which the rashest spirit dare not attempt on working days! Then two pretty sisters went through the stately figures of a minuet, and Margaret sang a song in her sweet voice, pronouncing the words so distinctly that you really knew what she was singing about, which nowadays is a very rare and wonderful accomplishment. Altogether it was a most festive evening, and Flora was in the act of remarking complacently, “We really are a most accomplished school!” when suddenly the scene changed, and an expression of horrified anxiety appeared on every face, for Mademoiselle came rushing into the room, which she had left but a few minutes before, and the tears stood in her eyes, and her face was scarlet with mingled grief and anger. She held in one hand the gold stopper of her precious scent-bottle, and in the other a number of pieces of broken glass, at sight of which a groan of dismay sounded on every hand.
“Voilà! Regardez See what I ’ave found! I go to my room, and the air is full of scent, and I turn up the gas, and there it is—on the dressing-table before my eyes—in pieces! My bottle—that I have kept all these years—that was given to me by my friend—my dear, good friend!”
Her voice broke off in a sob, and Miss Phipps came forward to examine the pieces with an expression of real distress.
“But, Mademoiselle, how has it happened? You found it on the table, you say,—not on the floor. If it had been on the floor, you might perhaps have swept it off in leaving the room, and not heard the sound against the mat. But on the table! How could it be broken on the table?”