perty of the school. He recited to them, till they were
word-perfect, a music-hall ditty of the early 'eighties--_Sur le bi,
sur le banc, sur le bi du bout du banc_, and delighted them with
dissertations on Mme. Yvette Guilbert's earlier repertoire. But for him
they would have gone to their lives' end without knowing that _pognon_
meant money; _rouspetance_, assaulting the police; _thune_, a five-franc
piece; and _bouffer_, to take nourishment. He made (according to his own
statement) French a living language. There was never a school in Great
Britain, the Colonies, or America on which the Parisian accent was so
electrically impressed. The retort, _Eh! ta soeur_, was the purest
Montmartre; also _Fich'-moi la paix, mon petit_, and _Tu as un toupet,
toi_; and the delectable locution, _Allons etrangler un perroquet_ (let
us strangle a parrot), employed by Apaches when inviting each other to
drink a glass of absinthe, soon became current French in the school for
invitations to surreptitious cocoa-parties.

The progress that academy made in a real grip of the French language was
miraculous; but the knowledge it gained in French grammar and syntax was
deplorable. A certain mid-term examination--the paper being set by a
neighbouring vicar--produced awful results. The phrase, "How do you do,
dear?" which ought, by all the rules of Stratford-atte-Bowe, to be
translated by _Comment vous portez-vous, ma chere?_ was rendered by most
of the senior scholars _Eh, ma vieille, ca boulotte?_ One innocent and
anachronistic damsel, writing on the execution of Charles I., declared
that he _cracha dans le panier_ in 1649, thereby mystifying the good
vicar, who was unaware that "to spit into the basket" is to be
guillotined. This wealth of vocabulary was discounted by abject poverty
in other branches of the language. No one could give a list of the words
in "_al_" that took "_s_" in the plural, no one knew anything at all
about the defective verb _echoir_, and the orthography of the school
would have disgraced a kindergarten. The head mistress suspected a lack
of method in the teaching of M. Pujol, and one day paid his class a
surprise visit.

The sight that met her eyes petrified her. The class, including the
governess, bubbled and gurgled and shrieked with laughter. M. Pujol, his
bright eyes agleam with merriment and his arms moving in frantic
gestures, danced about the platform. He was telling them a story--and
when Aristide told a story,