"De rien," said Mademoiselle again. Edith and Dorothy were sitting very demurely all the time with their books quite ready, waiting to begin. They were two nice little girls, and they learned their lessons very creditably. Mademoiselle sat and heard their little dull, expressionless voices running on glibly enough, giving forth the knowledge of the schoolbooks, the information, cut and dry, which had nothing to say to any circumstance round them, and remained in its concrete state, never dissolved or assimilated as long as memory held out--and wondered to herself what was the good of it, and wherein these unexceptionable children were the better for the pills or stores of knowledge which they thus swallowed dutifully. But this was not a reflection to be followed, since it would go to the root of much that is called education, and drive many honest persons out of the occupation by which they made their living. It was Mademoiselle's vocation, as it is of so many other people more pretentious, head-masters and classical tutors, and all the high-priests of the schools, to superintend the swallowing of these pills, which might be digested or otherwise, as it pleased Providence. The brother of the little girls was disposing of many more such doses at Eton with much the same result. It is, however, perhaps rather a pity when the teachers of youth are disturbed by such thoughts. It is much better to believe entirely in the advantage of what one is doing, as some happy people do,--to believe that you are determining the character of children when you administer boluses of knowledge, and that it is for the eternal gain of your parishioners that they should go to hear you preach. Mademoiselle did not believe that the little girls in the nursery would be at all changed out of their natural bent by anything she could do--and this, perhaps, took something from the fervour of her teaching, though everybody said she was so conscientious. Perhaps the thing which Edith and Dorothy retained most clearly from the day's lessons was their mother's laugh and assertion that the gentlemen had been "so impressed" by the appearance of Mademoiselle in her dressing-gown. What gentlemen? and why were they impressed? and which was it, the white one or the blue one? These were questions in which they took more interest than in the Merovingians and the divisions of the Continent under Charlemagne. Mademoiselle herself took the reference as a little prick on the part of Mrs Wargrave--a reminder that even to succour the sick it is indiscreet and unladylike to come down-stairs in a dressing-gown, and she felt it was a reproof to which she had perhaps justly laid herself open. She resolved that, until she was certain that everybody was in bed, nothing should induce her to put on a dressing-gown again.