Chapter 8

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.