sufficiently expressive English. "You bad girl! You
rude, bad girl! What 'ave you done? What you mean playing your treecks
on me? I will not 'ave it. I will complain to Miss Phipps. How dare
you throw your strings about to catch me as I come upstairs!
Impertinent! Disobedient!"

"P-please, Mademoiselle, it was a lasso! I didn't know it was you. I
said I would do it to the first person who came, and I didn't see your
face. It was only a joke."

"A joke! You catch me by the throat, you 'ang me by the neck, and you
call it a joke! You wicked, impertinent girl, you shall be punished for
this!"

Pixie heaved a sigh so sepulchral that it might almost have been called
a groan instead.

"It's just my luck!" she said dismally. "When I tried to show off
before Pat and the girls, I couldn't do it one time in a hundred, and
just now, when I'd have no credit, but only get into trouble, I caught
you the very first try!"

Did she mean to be impertinent? Mademoiselle looked down with sharp
suspicion, but even in her excited condition she could not mistake that
downcast look, and troubled, disconsolate frown. Her voice grew a
trifle less sharp, but she was very angry still.

"You ought to be ashamed playing such treecks! It is always the same
thing--there is no peace since you 'ave come. These girls were quite
good and mild, but you make them as wild as yourself. I will teach you
to be'ave better. You will come with me to the schoolroom and write out
a verrrb!"

"I will, Mademoiselle," said Pixie meekly, so meekly that her companions
fondly hoped that such exemplary submission would win forgiveness; but
no, Mademoiselle flounced downstairs, and Pixie followed at her heels,
to seat herself in solitary state at one end of the deserted schoolroom,
while Mademoiselle took possession of the desk and began to correct a
pile of exercise books.

To write out a verb is not, as a rule, a very lengthy matter, but
Mademoiselle's punishment verbs had invariably a phrase attached which
gave to them an added appropriateness, but very much lengthened the
task. "I am sorry that I was rude to Mademoiselle" was the verb which
poor Pixie was to-day condemned to conjugate, and the big straggling
sentences amplified the statement until it seemed impossible to express
it in any other way. "I am sorry that I was rude to Mademoiselle--I was
sorry that I was rude to Mademoiselle--I shall or will be sorry that I
was rude to Mademo