"I don't know which was the more miserable: Baby-Belle or that governess. _She_ had a perfect horror of the lake. Every time Baby-Belle went swimming, Mamzelle would hover and flap along the shore shrieking and calling: '_Bébé-Belle, Bébé-Belle! Trop loin! Trop loin! Viens ici! Vitement! Immédiatement!_' (That means 'Come here this minute' in French.) "And then if it rained, poor Baby-Belle, who loved to go barefoot, was made to wear rubbers and carry an umbrella! Oh, the blow to her pride! And when she rode horseback, she had to ride sidesaddle; and in the mornings she had to sit still while Mamzelle curled her hair in long curls around a wet stick, and whenever she talked back or was naughty, Mamzelle would strike her sharply on the knuckles with that same stick. "'Oh, I _hate_ Mamzelle!' Baby-Belle said to me on one of the few occasions when we were by ourselves. She was ready to cry with rage. 'I'd like to _kill_ her!' "And I said: 'Oh, no, Baby-Belle, you must never hate _anybody_ that much!' I was a dreadfully goody-goody child in those days (but I got over it, thank fortune). "And Baby-Belle stuck her tongue out at me and said: 'I don't give a hang. I hate her, I hate her, I _hate_ her! I wish she was dead. So there!' "Well, the last straw was what happened next. "Baby-Belle had a dear little dog, a toy fox terrier named Snippet. She thought the world of that little dog and he thought the world of her. He followed her everywhere, and his basket was in her room, though where he really slept, of course, was right on the foot of her bed. "So one day Baby-Belle did something particularly outrageous. I don't recollect what it was now, but it must have been pretty bad, because that night, to punish her, Mamzelle shut Snippet outside; not just outside Baby-Belle's room, mind you, but outside the _house_. "Oh, Baby-Belle really did cry then and promised to be good as gold for the rest of her natural life. But to no avail; Mamzelle was relentless. Baby-Belle could hear her poor little dog crying and yelping, but when she attempted to steal downstairs and let him in, she got no farther than her bedroom door, because right out there in the hall Mamzelle was sitting with that stick in her hand! Baby-Belle just had to go back to bed and cry herself to sleep. "Now late that night a storm came up; a heavy, cold rain. If she hadn't been asleep, I'm sure even Mamzelle would have taken pity on poor Snip and let him in. In the morning when they _did_ let him in, he was soaked to the bone and shivering dreadfully. Poor little mite, the next thing anyone knew he was down with pneumonia and had to be taken to Dr. Clisbee, the veterinary, and Dr. Clisbee said he didn't think he could save him--" "But did he? Could he?" Portia interrupted with great anxiety.