"Try the Franco-German affair; she was probably a blushing thing in a crinoline about that time--she'll enjoy telling us about it if we can only get her started." "I'll try," Joey said valiantly and breathlessly upon the stairs, and she worried out the French for her request during breakfast. Maddy met Remove II. B at nine o'clock precisely. Joey watched her mount the daïs with a sinking heart. She was a little lady, who made no pretence of being anything but elderly, with a dried-up skin that pouched under her black eyes, and the rather dusty "front" upon which the girls had commented did not match the hair at the back of her small well-set head. She was shabbily dressed, and all the little air of distinction with which she wore her clothes could not make them becoming. Joey decided that she should not like Mademoiselle de Lavernais. Mademoiselle wasted no time in preliminaries. She said "Good-morning" to her class in clear, ringing accents, and they responded very properly. Then the real business began. In rapid French she mentioned that she hoped to hear much interesting conversation from the Form this morning, and--"Barbara, we should all like to learn your opinion on the Channel Tunnel." Barbara became pink. "Je crois--bien--que c'est une bonne chose pour lesquels qui souffre de mal de mer," she blundered unhappily. Mademoiselle threw up her hands in horror. "Is it that I am taking the babies of the kindergarten?" she inquired. "How often am I to tell you that you nefare, _nefare_ translate literally from the English idiom to the French. Noreen, let me hear you." Noreen cast an agonised appeal on Joey. "What I think about the Channel Tunnel, Mademoiselle?" she asked. "En Français, si'l vous plaît, mon enfant." Noreen stared wildly around her for inspiration. "Je pense--je pense----" "Continuez," said Mademoiselle inexorably. "Je pense--que je n'ai pas des pensées sur le sujet--encore," poor Noreen informed her miserably. "Fourteen years old, and without a thought on a subject so concerning the welfare of your great nation," Mademoiselle said, with slow scorn. "It is a pity almost that you have a nation, Noreen. You should belong to some miserable little German State, where la patrie is represented by the gendarme with his big fist, and the tax-collector. Find another subject that you can talk of--some of those that figure in the paper during your silly season will suit you well, I make no doubt." Noreen, scarlet about the ears, was obviously unable to find a subject at all. Perhaps it was not wonderful! Joey, burning with resentment for her friend, rushed into the breach. "Il serait tres"--she tried to think of the word for improving, but failing to see even a glimpse of it, unfortunately substituted "_amusante_, si vous voulez dire á nous l'histoire d'une chose ou deux que vous avez vue pendant la guerre de soixante-dix quand les allemands et les français...."