not view the
matter in at all the same light as Madelon. In the first
place, if formed part of the furniture of the room, and had
always been there, so far as he knew--which, to the nun, whose
life was founded on a series of unquestioned precedents,
allowing of nothing arbitrary but the will of the Superior,
appeared an unanswerable reason why it should always remain;
and, in the next place, with the lack of sympathy that one
sometimes remarks in unimaginative minds, she did not in the
least understand the terror with which it inspired the child,
but assured her, in her good-humoured way, that that was all
nonsense, and the she would get over it in time. So the skull
remained, and Madelon was miserable, till one night, in a
moment of desperation, she jumped out of bed, seized it with
both hands, and flung it with all her might through the window
into the garden below. She was frightened when she heard the
crash of falling glass, for in her excitement she had never
stopped to open the window, but greatly relieved,
notwithstanding, to think that her enemy was gone, and slept
more soundly that night than she had done for a long time
previously.

Next morning, however, Madelon had a cold, a pane of glass was
found in fragments on the gravel walk beneath the window, a
skull was discovered, lying among the long grass on the lawn;
one can fancy the exclamations, the inquiries, the commotion.
Madelon, though not a little frightened, avowed boldly enough
what she had done, and so far gained her end that the skull
never reappeared, and a safe precedent was established for
Soeur Lucie's future guidance; but she got into great trouble
at the time, and gained moreover the unenviable distinction of
having committed a deed of unparalleled audacity. After this,
what might not be expected of such a child? The nuns at once
formed a bad opinion of her, which they owed it to themselves
to confirm on the occasion of each succeeding offence, by a
reference to this past misdeed which had first taught them of
what enormities she was capable.

Matters were no better when there came to be a question of
lessons. Madelon did not mind the actual learning, though she
wearied a little of the continued application to which she was
unused; but she resented to the last degree the astonishment
that her ignorance on all sorts of subjects excited both in
the nuns who taught her, and in the other children in the
class, and which was expressed with s