nice
things to eat. There was no boarder in the school who received
handsomer bags of cake and fruit than Pupasse. And although, not two
hours before, a girl might have been foremost in the shrill cry, "It
is Pupasse who made the noise! It is Pupasse who made me laugh!" there
was nothing in that paper bag reserved even from such a one. When the
girl herself with native delicacy would, under the circumstances,
judge it discreet to refuse, Pupasse would plead, "Oh, but take it to
give me pleasure!" And if still the refusal continued, Pupasse would
take her bag and go into the summer-house in the corner of the garden,
and cry until the unforgiving one would relent. But the first offering
of the bag was invariably to the stern dispenser of fools' caps and
the unnamed humiliation of the reversed skirt: Madame Joubert.

Pupasse was in the fifth class. The sixth--the abecedaires--was
the lowest in the school. Green was the color of the fifth;
white--innocence--of the abecedaires. Exhibition after exhibition, the
same green sash and green ribbons appeared on Pupasse's white muslin,
the white muslin getting longer and longer every year, trying to keep
up with her phenomenal growth; and always, from all over the room,
buzzed the audience's suppressed merriment at Pupasse's appearance
in the ranks of the little ones of nine and ten. It was that very
merriment that brought about the greatest change in the Institute
St. Denis. The sitting order of the classes was reversed. The first
class--the graduates--went up to the top step of the _estrade_; and
the little ones put on the lowest, behind the pianos. The graduates
grumbled that it was not _comme il faut_ to have young ladies of their
position stepping like camels up and down those great steps; and the
little girls said it was a shame to hide them behind the pianos after
their mamas had taken so much pains to make them look pretty. But
madame said--going also to natural history for her comparison--that
one must be a rhinoceros to continue the former routine.

Religion cannot be kept waiting forever on the intelligence. It was
always in the fourth class that the first communion was made; that is,
when the girls stayed one year in each class. But Pupasse had spent
three years in the sixth class, and had already been four in
the fifth, and Madame Joubert felt that longer delay would be
disrespectful to the good Lord. It was true that Pupasse could not
yet distinguish the ten comman