Pat was sent to a boarding-school near Paris, and it was decided that
Anne should attend St. Cecilia's School, a select institution where
American girls continued their studies in English and had lessons in
French and music. Mrs. Patterson herself went to enter Anne as a pupil.
St. Cecilia's School faced a little park on a quiet street. It was a
red-brick building, with balconies set in recesses between white
stuccoed pillars. Everything about the place was formal and dignified.
The lower floor was occupied by parlors, offices, class-rooms, and
dining-rooms. Through wide-open doors at the end of the hall, Mrs.
Patterson and Anne had a pleasant view of the long piazza at the back of
the house. It opened on a grass-plot edged with flowerbeds. The neat
gravel paths ended in short flights of steps, under rose-covered
archways, that led down a terrace to the playground.
While they waited in a handsome, formal parlor for Mademoiselle Duroc,
Mrs. Patterson chatted pleasantly to Anne about the swings and arbors
and pear-trees on the playground. But Anne sat silent, with a lump in
her throat, and clutched her friend's hand tighter and tighter, while
she watched for the principal's entrance as she would have watched for
an ogre in whose den she had been trapped. At last--it was really in a
very few minutes--Mademoiselle Duroc entered the room. While she talked
with Mrs. Patterson, Anne regarded her with awe.
Like her surroundings, Mademoiselle was formal and handsome. She was of
middle height, but she carried herself with such stately grace that she
impressed Anne as being very tall. Her glossy hair, of which no one
ever saw a strand out of place, was arranged in elaborate waves and
coils supported by a tall shell comb. She wore a very long, very stiff
black silk gown trimmed with beads and lace, and she had a purple silk
shawl around her shoulders. When she moved, her skirts rustled in a
stately fashion and sent forth a stately odor of sandalwood.
"I shall have to do whatever she tells me," Anne knew at once. "If she
tells me to walk in the fire, I shall have to go."
That was the impression Mademoiselle Duroc always made on people. She
was a born general, and if she had been a man and had lived a century
earlier, she would have been one of the great Napoleon's marshals and
led a freezing, starving little band to impossible victories;--so Miss
Morris said. Miss Morris, a stout, middle-aged, New England lady, was
Mademoiselle's assistant. She had a kind heart, but the girls thought
her cross because she was always making a worried effort to secure the
order and attention which came of themselves as soon as Mademoiselle
entered the study-hall. When Miss Morris scolded--which was often, as
Anne was to learn--her face grew very red and her voice very rough, and
she flapped her arms in a peculiar way. Anne did not like to be scolded
but she liked to watch Miss Morris when she was angry; it was strange
and interesting to see a person look so much like a turkey-cock.
Anne usually watched people very closely with her bright, soft, hazel
eyes. Now, however, she was too frightened and miserable to raise her
eyes above Mademoiselle's satin slippers, even to look at Miss Morris
who came in to take charge of the new pupil.
"This is my borrowed daughter, for the winter at least," Mrs. Patterson
explained, with her arm around the shy, excited child. "You will find
her studious and you will find her obedient. I shall expect you to give
her back to me next summer a very learned young lady."
Anne clung to Mrs. Patterson's hand like a drowning man to a raft.
"Don't leave me," she whispered imploringly. "Please take me back with
you. Oh, please!"
"Dearie, I wish I could," her friend answered with a caress. "But I
can't. My little girl must stay here now--and study--and be good."
Anne watched the carriage start off, feeling that it must, must, must
turn and come back to get her. But it rolled out of sight under the
archway of trees. Then Miss Morris took her by the hand and led her into
a small office. She read a long list of things that Anne must do and a
still longer list of things that she must not do. She called on Anne to
read in two or three little books, and questioned her about arithmetic
and history and geography.
Finally she escorted the new pupil to the dormitory. It was a large,
spotless apartment which Anne was to share with five other American
girls, some older, some younger, than herself. Each girl had her own
little white bed, her own little white dressing-table and washstand, her
own little white box with chintz-cushioned top, in which to keep her
private belongings. Miss Morris called Louise, one of the maids, to
unpack Anne's trunk. As the articles were put in her box and drawers and
on her shelves and hooks in the dormitory closet, Miss Morris said: "Now
remember where your shoes are, and keep them there."
"Do not forget to put your aprons always in that corner of the third
shelf."
"The left-hand drawer of the dressing-table is for your handkerchiefs,
and the right-hand drawer is for your hair-ribbons."
Anne sat by, with Honey-Sweet clasped in her arms, and meekly answered,
"Yes, Miss Morris," or "No, Miss Morris," as the occasion demanded.
It was luncheon-time when the unpacking was finished and in the
dining-room Anne met her five room-mates. Fat, freckle-faced, stupid
Amelia Harvey and clever, idle Madge Allison were cousins in charge of
Madge's older sister who was studying art. Annette and Bébé Girard were
pretty, dark-eyed chatterboxes whose father was consul at Havre. Fair,
chubby, even-tempered Elsie Hart was the daughter of a clergyman who was
travelling in the Holy Land.
Anne, who had never in her life had to do a certain thing at a certain
time, did not find it easy to adjust her habits to the routine of school
life. Her morning toilette was especially troublesome. She tumbled out
of bed a little behind time at Louise's summons and during each
operation of the dressing period she fell a little farther behind. In
vain Louise reproved and hurried her.
One Wednesday morning, Anne was especially provoking. Not that she meant
to be. It just happened so. She dawdled over her bath, and when Louise
tried to hurry her, she stopped quite still to argue the matter.
"You want me to be clean, don't you?" she asked.
"But yes! Not to the scrub-off of the skin," protested Louise.
Anne continued to rub her ears. "It's a--a 'sponsibility to wash my own
corners. And Mrs. Patterson says it's a disgrace to be dingy," she
explained.
Then she sat down on the floor and proceeded to put on her
stockings,--that is, she meant to put them on, but she became so
absorbed in trying to spell her name backwards that she forgot about the
stockings. Louise caught her by the shoulder.
"You will dress instant, Mees Anne," she threatened, "or I report you to
Mademoiselle."
Anne had heard that threat too often to be disturbed by it. She went to
get a fresh apron, then, seeing that Honey-Sweet's frock was soiled, she
selected a fresh frock for her doll whom she reproved severely for being
so untidy and so slow about dressing. Louise, who was wrestling with
Annette's curls, turned and saw Anne devoting herself to her doll's
toilette when she ought to have been finishing her own. The much-tried
maid snatched away Honey-Sweet and shook her heartily.
"Don't, don't, Louise!" cried Anne. "Don't you hurt Honey-Sweet. I'll
dress. I'll hurry. I'll be quick."
Louise looked keenly at Anne's flushed, earnest face. Then she gave poor
Honey-Sweet a smart little smack. "The wicked _bébé_!" she exclaimed.
"She does not permit that you make the toilette. If you are not dressed
in six minutes exact, I give the spank once more to the bad _bébé_!"
Anne's fingers hurried as she had not known they could hurry and in
exactly four minutes she presented herself for Louise to tie her
hair-ribbons, while she cuddled and pitied her rescued baby.
"Oh, ho! Mees Anne," said Louise, her eyes sparkling with satisfaction
at having found a way to enforce promptness. "Each morning that is
tardy, I give the spank to the wicked _bébé_ that makes you to delay."
To save Honey-Sweet from punishment, Anne sprang up the next morning at
Louise's first call and dressed at once. To her surprise, she found that
it was really pleasanter than dawdling over her toilette, and Louise
good-naturedly gave her permission to take Honey-Sweet for a
before-breakfast stroll to the arbor in the playground.
From the first, Anne got on well in her classes. She did not like to
study lessons in books--she was always getting tangled up in long
sentences or stumbling over big words--but where she once, in spite of
the printed page, understood a subject, she made it her own. The scenes
and events described in her history, geography, and reading lessons were
vivid to her mind's eye and she pictured them vividly to others. Her
classmates soon found that they could learn a lesson in half the time
and with half the effort by studying it with Anne.
"I speak to study the hist'ry with Anne to-day," Amelia would say.
"Anne, if you'll go over the g'og'aphy lesson with me, I'll work your
'zamples for you," Madge would promise.
The girls found, too, that Anne could tell the most delightful stories.
And she was always inventing charming new ways to play. Instead of
keeping her paper dolls limp and loose, like the other girls, she pasted
them on stiff cardboard, pulled them about with threads, and had a
moving-picture show to illustrate a story that she made up. The
admission price was five pins, those not too badly bent being accepted.