As is often the case in families which were originally in comfortable circumstances, Aline, being the eldest, had been educated in one of the best boarding-schools in Paris, Elise had remained there two years with her; but the two younger ones, having come too late, had been sent to little day-schools in the quarter and had all their studies to complete; and it was no easy matter, for the youngest laughed on every pretext, an exuberant, healthy, youthful laugh, like the warbling of a lark drunken on green wheat, and flew away out of sight of desk and symbols, while Mademoiselle Henriette, always haunted by her ideas of grandeur, her love of "the substantial," was none too eager for study. That young person of fifteen, to whom her father had bequeathed something of his imaginative faculty, was already arranging her life in anticipation, and declared formally that she should marry some one of birth and should never have more than three children: "A boy for the name, and two little girls--so that I can dress them alike." "Yes, that's right," Grandmamma would say, "you shall dress them alike. Meanwhile, let us see about our participles." But the most troublesome of all was Elise with her thrice unsuccessful examination in history, always rejected and preparing herself anew, subject to attacks of profound terror and self-distrust which led her to carry that unfortunate handbook of French history with her wherever she went, and to open it at every instant, in the omnibus, in the street, even at the breakfast table; but, being already a young woman and very pretty, she no longer had the mechanical memory of childhood in which dates and events are incrusted forever. Amid her other preoccupations the lesson would fly away in a moment, despite the pupil's apparent application, her long lashes concealing her eyes, her curls sweeping the page, and her rosy mouth twitching slightly at the corners as she repeated again and again: "Louis le Hutin, 1314-1316. Philippe V, le Long, 1316-1322--1322.--Oh! Grandmamma, I am lost. I shall never learn them." Thereupon Grandmamma would take a hand, help her to fix her attention, to store away some of those barbarous dates in the Middle Ages, as sharp-pointed as the helmets of the warriors of those days. And in the intervals of those manifold tasks, of that general and constant superintendence, she found time to make pretty things, to take from her work-basket some piece of knitting or embroidery, which clung to her as steadfastly as young Elise to her history of France. Even when she was talking, her fingers were never unemployed for one moment. "Do you never rest?" de Gery asked her while she counted in a whisper the stitches of her embroidery, "three, four, five," in order to vary the shades.