'est difficile! Je n'en veux
pas. Cela m'ennuie trop.«
    A teacher who understood her business would take it back at once, without
hesitation, contest, or expostulation - proceed with even exaggerated care to
smoothe every difficulty, to reduce it to the level of their understandings,
return it to them thus modified, and lay on the lash of sarcasm with unsparing
hand. They would feel the sting, perhaps wince a little under it, but they bore
no malice against this sort of attack, provided the sneer was not sour but
hearty, and that it held well up to them, in a clear light and bold type, so
that she who ran might read, their incapacity, ignorance, and sloth. They would
riot for three additional lines to a lesson; but I never knew them rebel against
a wound given to their self-respect: the little they had of that quality was
trained to be crushed, and it rather liked the pressure of a firm heel, than
otherwise.
    By degrees, as I acquired fluency and freedom in their language, and could
make such application of its more nervous idioms as suited their case, the elder
and more intelligent girls began rather to like me, in their way: I noticed that
whenever a pupil had been roused to feel in her soul the stirring of worthy
emulation, or the quickening of honest shame, from that date she was won. If I
could but once make their (usually large) ears burn under their thick, glossy
hair, all was comparatively well. By-and-by bouquets began to be laid on my desk
in the morning: by way of acknowledgment for this little foreign attention, I
used sometimes to walk with a select few during recreation. In the course of
conversation it befel once or twice that I made an unpremeditated attempt to
rectify some of their singularly distorted notions of principle, especially I
expressed my ideas of the evil and baseness of a lie. In an unguarded moment, I
chanced to say that, of the two errors, I considered falsehood worse than an
occasional lapse in church-attendance. The poor girls were tutored to report in
Catholic ears whatever the Protestant teacher said. An edifying consequence
ensued. Something - an unseen, an indefinite, a nameless something - stole
between myself and these my best pupils: the bouquets continued to be offered,
but conversation thenceforth became impracticable. As I paced the alleys or sat
in the berceau, a girl never came to my right hand but a teacher, as if by
magic, appeared at my left. Also, wonderful
