f time and paper!"

Madame shrugged her shoulders eloquently.

"What will you? We all have our own methods! As for me, I win their
funny little hearts, then they will work at their lessons for love--yes,
for sheer love. In but a few months they have made _beaucoup de progres!
N'est-ce pas?_ Ah, it is my theory that we must love first, if we will
learn."

Though Miss Janet might sniff at Madame's sentimental method of
education, she nevertheless could not deny its admirable results. In
French and music the school had lately made enormous strides. The elder
girls had begun to read French story-books for amusement, and the
juniors had learnt to play some French games, which they repeated with a
pretty accent. Both violin and piano students played with a fire and
spirit that had been conspicuous by their absence a year ago, under the
tame instruction of Miss Parlane.

Madame did not confine herself entirely to her own subjects. She took an
interest in all the activities of the school. It was she who arranged a
ramble on the cliffs.

"They get so hot, playing _toujours_ at the cricket," she said to Miss
Kingsley. "Of what use is it to hit about a ball? Let them come with me
for a promenade upon the hills and we shall get flowers to press for the
_musee_. It is not well to do always the same thing."

A ramble for the purpose of gathering wild-flowers was a suggestion
that appealed to the Sixth. The museum was not too well furnished with
specimens. There was scope for any amount of further collecting.

Since the curious episode of the cut telephone wires during the Easter
holidays, there had been no further happenings at the museum. Miss
Kingsley inclined to Madame Bertier's view, that some spy, finding the
window had been left open, had taken a ladder and forced an entrance
that way. She had caused a screw to be placed in the window, and the
door was kept carefully locked except when the room was in use.

To Lorraine the place felt haunted. She had a horror of being there
alone, and never ventured to go there unless accompanied by two or three
of her schoolfellows. She had an unreasonable idea that the little
trap-door in the corner might suddenly open, and a sinister face peer
down out of the darkness. The nervous impression was so strong that she
held the monitresses' meetings in the class-room instead of in the
museum. When the mid-term beano came round, she suggested that they
should assemble in the summer-house.