ish to see England?"

"Yes, and an intention."

And here a voice, the voice of the directress, interposed:

"Mademoiselle Henri, je crois qu'il va pleuvoir; vous feriez bien, ma
bonne amie, de retourner chez vous tout de suite."

In silence, without a word of thanks for this officious warning, Mdlle.
Henri collected her books; she moved to me respectfully, endeavoured to
move to her superior, though the endeavour was almost a failure, for her
head seemed as if it would not bend, and thus departed.

Where there is one grain of perseverance or wilfulness in the
composition, trifling obstacles are ever known rather to stimulate than
discourage. Mdlle. Reuter might as well have spared herself the trouble
of giving that intimation about the weather (by-the-by her prediction
was falsified by the event--it did not rain that evening). At the close
of the next lesson I was again at Mdlle. Henri's desk. Thus did I accost
her:--

"What is your idea of England, mademoiselle? Why do you wish to go
there?"

Accustomed by this time to the calculated abruptness of my manner, it no
longer discomposed or surprised her, and she answered with only so
much of hesitation as was rendered inevitable by the difficulty she
experienced in improvising the translation of her thoughts from French
to English.

"England is something unique, as I have heard and read; my idea of it is
vague, and I want to go there to render my idea clear, definite."

"Hum! How much of England do you suppose you could see if you went there
in the capacity of a teacher? A strange notion you must have of getting
a clear and definite idea of a country! All you could see of Great
Britain would be the interior of a school, or at most of one or two
private dwellings."

"It would be an English school; they would be English dwellings."

"Indisputably; but what then? What would be the value of observations
made on a scale so narrow?"

"Monsieur, might not one learn something by analogy?
An-echantillon--a--a sample often serves to give an idea of the whole;
besides, narrow and wide are words comparative, are they not? All my
life would perhaps seem narrow in your eyes--all the life of a--that
little animal subterranean--une taupe--comment dit-on?"

"Mole."

"Yes--a mole, which lives underground would seem narrow even to me."

"Well, mademoiselle--what then? Proceed."

"Mais, monsieur, vous me comprenez."

"Not in the least; have the goodness to explain."

"