he was none too premature; for the old St. Louis
cemetery, as was shortly enough proved, was a near reach for all three
of the old friends.

PUPASSE

Every day, every day, it was the same overture in Madame Joubert's
room in the Institute St. Denis; the strident:

"Mesdemoiselles; a vos places! Notre Pere qui est dans le ciel--Qui a
fait ce bruit?"

"It's Pupasse, madame! It's Pupasse!" The answer invariably was
unanimous.

"But, Madame Joubert,--I assure you, Madame Joubert,--I could not help
it! They know I could not help it!"

By this time the fresh new fool's cap made from yesterday's "Bee"
would have been pinned on her head.

"Quelle injustice! Quelle injustice!"

This last apostrophe in a high, whining nasal voice, always procured
Pupasse's elevation on the tall three-legged stool in the corner.

It was a theory of the little girls in the primary class that Madame
Joubert would be much more lenient to their own little inevitabilities
of bad conduct and lessons if Pupasse did not invariably comb her
the wrong way every morning after prayers, by dropping something,
or sniffling, or sneezing. Therefore, while they distractedly got
together books, slates, and copy-books, their infantile eyes found
time to dart deadly reproaches toward the corner of penitence, and
their little lips, still shaped from their first nourishment, pouted
anything but sympathy for the occupant of it.

Indeed, it would have been a most startling unreality to have ever
entered Madame Joubert's room and not seen Pupasse in that corner, on
that stool, her tall figure shooting up like a post, until her tall,
pointed _bonnet d' ane_ came within an inch or two of the ceiling.
It was her hoop-skirt that best testified to her height. It was the
period of those funnel-shaped hoop-skirts that spread out with such
nice mathematical proportions, from the waist down, that it seemed
they must have emanated from the brains of astronomers, like the
orbits, and diameters, and other things belonging to the heavenly
bodies. Pupasse could not have come within three feet of the wall with
her hoop-skirt distended. To have forced matters was not to be thought
of an instant. So even in her greatest grief and indignation, she had
to pause before the three-legged black stool, and gather up steel
after steel of her circumference in her hands behind, until her calico
skirt careened and flattened; and so she could manage to accommodate
herself to th