"There, that's a quaver!"
"No, there's no quaver!"
"This is a flat!"
"No, you forget the sharp! How absurd you are!" added my mother, perfectly furious.
A few minutes later my mother went to her room and Mlle. Clarisse departed, muttering as she left.
As for me, I was choking with laughter in my bedroom, for one of my cousins, who was very musical, had helped me to add sharps, flats, and quavers to the music-sheet, and we had done it with such care that even a trained eye would have had difficulty in immediately discerning the fraud. As Mlle. Clarisse had been sent off, I had no lesson that day. Mamma gazed at me a long time with her mysterious eyes—the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my life—and then she said, speaking very slowly:—
"After luncheon there is to be a family council."
I felt myself turning pale.
"All right," I answered; "what frock am I to put on, mamma?" I said this merely for the sake of saying something and to keep myself from crying.
"Put on your blue silk; you look more staid in that."