But poor Mr. Ravigote found it impossible to make the little girl pay the slightest attention to him while her beads were scattered on the floor; and his only alternative was to stoop down and help her to pick them up. Uncle Philip raised his eyes from the paper, and said, "Never mind the beads, my dear; finish the lesson, and I will buy you a new coral necklace to-morrow, and a much prettier one than that." Little Anne instantly rose from the floor, and whisking into her chair, prepared to resume her lesson with alacrity. "_Eh! bien_," said the teacher, "now we will start off again, and read the inside of a book. Come, here is the fable of the fox and the grapes. These are the fables that we read during the _ancien régime_; there are none so good now." Mr. Ravigote then proceeded to read with her, translating as he went on, and making her repeat after him--"A fox of Normandy, (some say of Gascony,) &c., &c. Now, my dear, you must try this day and make a copy of the nasal sounds as you hear them from me. It is in these sounds that you are always the very worst. The nasal sounds are the soul and the life of French speaking." The teacher bent over the book, and little Anne followed his pronunciation more closely than she had ever done before: he exclaiming at every sentence, "Very well--very well, indeed, my dear. To-day you have the nasal sounds, _comme une ange_."[45] [Footnote 45: Like an angel.] But on turning round to pat her head, he perceived that _gentille Annette_ was holding her nose between her thumb and finger, and that it was in this way only she had managed to give him satisfaction with the nasal sounds. He started back aghast, exclaiming-- "_Ah! quelle friponnerie! la petite coquine! Voici un grand acte de fourberie et de méchanceté!_[46] So young and so depraved--ah! I fear, I much fear, she will grow up a rogue-a cheat--perhaps a thief. _Je suis glacé d'horreur! Je tremble! Je frissonne!_"[47] [Footnote 46: Ah! what roguery--the little jade! What an instance of imposture and wickedness!] [Footnote 47: I am frozen with horror!--I tremble!--I shiver!] "I'll tell you what," said Uncle Philip, laying down his newspaper, "you need neither tremble nor frisson, nor get yourself into any horror about it. The child's only a girl of five years old, and I've no notion that the little tricks, that all children are apt to play at times, are proofs of natural wickedness, or signs that they will grow up bad men and women. But to cut the matter short, the girl is too little to learn French. She is not old enough either to understand it, or to remember it, and you see it's impossible for her to give her mind to it. So from this time, I say, she shall learn no more French till she is grown up, and desires it herself. (_Little Anne gave a skip half way to the ceiling._) You shall be paid for her quarter all the same, and I'll pay you myself on the spot. So you need never come again."