thought, testified a certain gratification at this mark of confidence; and if discretion of bearing could have justified the step, it would by him have been amply justified. Here, however, in this land of convents and confessionals, such a presence as his was not to be suffered with impunity in a "Pensionnat de demoiselles". The school gossiped, the kitchen whispered, the town caught the rumor, parents wrote letters and paid visits of remonstrance. Madame, had she been weak, would now have been lost: a dozen rival educational houses were ready to improve this false step—if false step it were—to her ruin; but Madame was not weak, and little Jesuit though she might be, yet I clapped the hands of my heart, and with its voice cried "brava!" as I watched her able bearing, her skilled management, her temper and her firmness on this occasion.
She met the alarmed parents with a good-humored, easy grace: for nobody matched her in, I know not whether to say the possession or the assumption of a certain "rondeur et franchise de bonne femme", which on various occasions gained the point aimed at with instant and complete success, where severe gravity and serious reasoning would probably have failed.
"Ce pauvre Dr. Jean!" she would say, chuckling and rubbing joyously her fat, little, white hands; "ce cher jeune homme! le meilleur créature du monde" and go on to explain how she happened to be employing him for her own children, who were so fond of him they would scream themselves into fits at the thought of another doctor; how where she had confidence for her own, she thought it natural to repose trust for others, and au reste it was only the most temporary expedient in the world: Blanche and Angélique had the migraine; Dr. John had written a prescription; voilà tout!
The parents' mouths were closed. Blanche and Angélique saved her all remaining trouble by chanting loud duets in their physician's praise; the other pupils echoed them, unanimously declaring that when they were ill they would have Dr. John and nobody else; and madame laughed, and the parents laughed too. The Labassecourienes must have a large organ of philoprogenitiveness: at least the indulgence of offspring is carried by them to excessive lengths; the law of
