"It's just my luck!" she said dismally. "When I tried to show off before Pat and the girls, I couldn't do it one time in a hundred, and just now, when I'd have no credit, but only get into trouble, I caught you the very first try!" Did she mean to be impertinent? Mademoiselle looked down with sharp suspicion, but even in her excited condition she could not mistake that downcast look, and troubled, disconsolate frown. Her voice grew a trifle less sharp, but she was very angry still. "You ought to be ashamed playing such treecks! It is always the same thing--there is no peace since you 'ave come. These girls were quite good and mild, but you make them as wild as yourself. I will teach you to be'ave better. You will come with me to the schoolroom and write out a verrrb!" "I will, Mademoiselle," said Pixie meekly, so meekly that her companions fondly hoped that such exemplary submission would win forgiveness; but no, Mademoiselle flounced downstairs, and Pixie followed at her heels, to seat herself in solitary state at one end of the deserted schoolroom, while Mademoiselle took possession of the desk and began to correct a pile of exercise books. To write out a verb is not, as a rule, a very lengthy matter, but Mademoiselle's punishment verbs had invariably a phrase attached which gave to them an added appropriateness, but very much lengthened the task. "I am sorry that I was rude to Mademoiselle" was the verb which poor Pixie was to-day condemned to conjugate, and the big straggling sentences amplified the statement until it seemed impossible to express it in any other way. "I am sorry that I was rude to Mademoiselle--I was sorry that I was rude to Mademoiselle--I shall or will be sorry that I was rude to Mademoiselle." At intervals of every two or three minutes Mademoiselle glanced from her work to the little figure at the other end of the room, but each time Pixie's head was bent over her task, and the wandering eyes were glued to their task. Such industry seemed so unnatural that the onlooker became first puzzled and then uneasy, and at last resorted to coughing and moving about in her chair in order to satisfy curiosity. In vain! Pixie's head went down lower than ever, and the pen scratched away without a moment's cessation, for she was enduring that unreasoning panic of fear which sensitive children suffer when they are in disgrace with their elders. She had been brought up in an atmosphere of tender indulgence, had been the adored baby of the household, who had never heard the sound of an angry voice, so that now, to sit alone in a room with a person whom she had displeased, reduced her to a condition of trembling fear. Her eyelids felt weighed down, a lump rose in her throat, and she trembled as with cold, and then presently the dreaded voice spoke again, and Mademoiselle said-- "Pixie, come here. Bring your verrrb!"