DE MENNECY: "Je ne vous ai jamais defendu de me questionner;
vous n'ecoutez pas, mademoiselle. J'ai dit qu'il ne fallait pas
discuter avec moi."
MARGOT (keenly): "But, mademoiselle, discussion is the only way of
making lessons interesting."
MLLE. DE MENNECY (with violence): "Voulez-vous vous taire?"
To talk to a girl of nearly seventeen in this way was so
unintelligent that I made up my mind I would waste neither time
nor affection on her.
None of the girls were particularly clever, but we all liked each
other and for the first time--and I may safely say the last--I was
looked upon as a kind of heroine. It came about in this way: Mlle.
de Mennecy was never wrong. To quote Miss Fowler's admirable
saying a propos of her father, "She always let us have her own
way." If the bottle of ink was upset, or the back of a book burst,
she never waited to find out who had done it, but in a torrent of
words crashed into the first girl she suspected, her face becoming
a silly mauve and her bust heaving with passion. This made me so
indignant that, one day when the ink was spilt and Mlle. de
Mennecy as usual scolded the wrong girl, I determined I would
stand it no longer. Meeting the victim of Mademoiselle's temper in
the passage, I said to her:
"But why didn't you say you hadn't done it, ass!"
GIRL (catching her sob): "What was the good! She never listens;
and I would only have had to tell her who really spilt the ink."
This did seem a little awkward, so I said to her:
"That would never have done! Very well, then, I will go and put
the thing right for you, but tell the girls they must back me.
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