unate habit of saying her prayers
out loud. One night, after a peculiarly trying day, she prayed that
Priscilla might be forgiven for being so aggravating. Whereupon
Priscilla knelt before her bed, and prayed that Keren might become less
self-righteous and stubborn, and more ready to join in the sports of her
playmates with generosity and openness of spirit. They carried
on--well, really, one might almost call it a praying match."

"Shocking!" cried Miss Lord.

"And little Aurelie Deraismes--they have been drilling the child
in--er--idiomatic English. The phrase that I overheard her repeating,
seemed scarcely the expression that a lady would use."

"What was it?" inquired the Dowager, with a slightly expectant note.

"I'll be _gum-swizzled_!"

Miss Wadsworth colored a deep pink. It was foreign to her nature even to
repeat so doubtful an expression.

The Dowager's lips twitched. It was a fact, deplored by her assistants,
that her sense of humor frequently ran away with her sense of justice. A
very naughty little girl, if she managed to be funny, might hope to
escape; whereas an equally naughty little girl, who was not funny, paid
the full penalty of her crime. Fortunately, however, the school at large
had not discovered this vulnerable spot in the Dowager's armor.

"Their influence," it was Miss Lord who spoke, "is demoralizing the
school. Mae Van Arsdale says that she will go home if she has to room
any longer with Patty Wyatt. I do not know what the trouble is, but--"

"I know it!" said Mademoiselle. "The whole school laughs. It is touching
the question of a _sweetch_."

"Of what?" The Dowager cocked her head. Mademoiselle's English was at
times difficult. She mixed her languages impartially.

"A sweetch--some hair--to make pompadour. Last week when they have
tableaux, Patty has borrowed it and has dyed it with blueing to make a
beard for Bluebeard. But being yellow to start, it has become green, and
the color will not wash out. The sweetch is ruin--entirely ruin--and
Patty is desolate. She has apologize. She thought it would wash, but
since it will not wash, she has suggest to Mae that she color her own
hair to match the sweetch, and Mae lose her temper and call names. Then
Patty has pretend to cry, and she put the green hair on Mae's bed with
a wreath of flowers around, and she hang a stocking on the door for
crape, and invite the girls to come to the funeral, and everybody laugh
at Mae."

"It's just as