"Ah, Miss Ryder, you are so good, so thoughtful," she said in her delicious French. "You have the kind heart; but I must earn my salary, and if it is in this way that I am most useful to you, let me show my goodwill, my devotion to your school, by going where the young ladies will. They amuse me--those dear children. I love being with them, and I am strong and well. I do not tire. "But there is one thing, chère Mademoiselle Ryder. I know that the other teachers--my associates--dislike the shopping. They object to chaperoning the young ladies upon the little expeditions to the shops. Me, I do not mind. I am glad to go if it will save the others from a duty that is disagreeable. It has come to me that perhaps the theatre is more popular than the shopping, that it may give pleasure to chaperon to the theatre, the opera, the concert. That is so, is it not?" Miss Ryder admitted that there might be reason in the theory. Mademoiselle smiled, a sweet, swift smile. "Ah, it is so. Then you will do me a favour? Yes? It would be better that for the theatre other chaperons should be chosen. Me, I will take for myself all the shopping. It will give me pleasure to have it so. I will feel that it is for the happiness of my fellow-teachers, and that will give _me_ happiness. You will arrange it so, is it not?" Miss Lucilla demurred. The arrangement was unfair. Shopping was the teachers' _bête noire_. It would not do to load all of the unpleasant duty upon one pair of shoulders. Mademoiselle refused to be spared. She appreciated her superior's consideration, but she was bent upon being noble, and begged for martyrdom. "After all it is not as if I, too, disliked the thing. Me, I am French. I love the shops. Fatiguing? Yes, the young ladies are slow in making up their minds, but it is all one to me." In the end Miss Lucilla yielded, and in due course the announcement was made in faculty meeting that Mademoiselle de Courcelles would chaperon all shopping expeditions, but would do no evening chaperoning. Miss Lucilla accompanied the announcement by a few remarks concerning the cheerful spirit in which Mademoiselle de Courcelles accepted the undesirable duty. Mademoiselle looked modestly deprecatory. The teachers were surprised and pleased. Only Miss Barnes, unmoved, eyed the willing martyr with a coolly speculative glance. Shopping was always a vital issue with a certain set of the Ryder pupils. The girls were extravagant and amply provided with pocket-money by parents foolishly indulgent. Moreover, shopping commissions from home were many; and, though one of the school rules carefully embalmed in the circulars was to the effect that no pupil could be allowed more than one shopping expedition in any one week, this rule, like many another, was more honored in the breach than in the observance.