ALL MISS GISSING’S SCHOLARS ARE WELL-BEHAVED AND DILIGENT. THERE IS NOTHING SO PLEASANT AS TO SEE THEM, WITH THEIR LITTLE STIFF BODIES AND THEIR HEADS SO ERECT.

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“You hear, Rose Benoit? I have eight left,” adds Miss Genseigne.

Rose Benoit lapses into a deep revery. She hears Miss Genseigne say she has eight left, but whether it is eight hats or handkerchiefs, or for that matter eight apples or pens she does not know. The thing worries her for quite a long while. She understands very little about arithmetic.

On the other hand she is very well up in sacred history. Miss Genseigne has not a single scholar who can describe the garden of Eden or Noah’s Ark like Rose Benoit. Rose Benoit knows all the flowers of paradise and all the animals that were in the ark. She knows as many fables as Miss Genseigne herself. She knows all the story of the Crow and the Fox, of the Ass and the Little Dog, of the Cock and the Pullet. It never surprises her to hear it said that the animals talked in the olden days. She would be more surprised to hear that they did not talk any more. She is quite sure that she understands the language of her big dog Tom, and of little Cheep her canary. And she is right, too. Animals have always talked, and always will talk, but they talk only to their friends. Rose Benoit loves them and they love her. That’s why she understands them. To be understood there is nothing like sympathy.

To-day Rose Benoit has recited her lesson without a fault. She receives a good mark. Emmeline Capel too receives a good mark for her recitation in arithmetic.

When the class is out she tells her mother about her good mark, and then she asks: “What’s the use of a good mark, Mamma?”

“A good mark is no use at all,” says her mother. “That’s just the reason why you should be proud to have it. You will know one day, child, that the rewards men think the most of are those that give them honor rather than profit.”

MARY

Little girls have a natural desire to gather flowers and stars. But stars won’t let themselves be picked and so seem to teach little girls that in this world there are some desires that are destined never to be satisfied.

Miss Mary went out in the park, where she discovered a basket of hortensias. She knew that the flowers of hortensias are pretty, and so she picked one. It was very hard to pick too. She seized the plant in both hands, at great risk of sitting down hard when the stem broke. She was very pleased and proud at what she’d done. But her nurse saw her: and scolded and darted at Miss Mary, seizing her by the arm. To make her do penance she did not put her in the dark closet this time, but posted her underneath a great chestnut tree, in the shade of a big Japanese umbrella.

There Miss Mary sits, surprised and astonished, and thinks it all over. Her flower in her hand, with the stripes of the umbrella making rays around her, she looked like some queer little foreign idol.

THE LITTLE PENITENT, PERFECTLY STILL BENEATH HER SHINING FRAME, LOOKS AROUND HER AT THE SKY AND THE EARTH. THEY ARE LARGE, THE EARTH AND SKY, AND CAN AMUSE A LITTLE GIRL FOR A WHILE. BUT THE HYDRANGEA INTERESTS HER MORE THAN ANYTHING.

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Her nurse said: “Mary, I forbid you to carry that flower in your mouth. If you disobey me your little dog Toto will eat your ears up for you”—with which warning she departed.

The little penitent, perfectly still beneath her shining frame, looks around her at the sky and the earth. They are large, the earth and sky, and can amuse a little girl for a while. But the hortensia flower interests her more than anything. She reflects: “A flower should smell good.” And she raises nearer to her nose the beautiful rosy, blue tempered ball. She tries to smell it but can smell nothing. She is not clever at smelling perfumes. Not so very, very long ago she used to breathe over the roses instead of sniffing them in. We must not laugh at her for that: one can’t learn everything at once. Besides, she might have had, like her mother, a very subtle sense of smell that could smell nothing. The flower of the hortensia has no odor. That is why one grows tired of it, in spite of its beauty. But Miss Mary thinks: “This flower is made of sugar, maybe.” With that she opens her mouth wide, and starts to raise the flower to her lips.

A cry recalls her. Yap!

It is the little dog Toto, who, darting round a border of geraniums, comes and sets himself, his ears straight up, before Miss Mary and looks at her warningly with his round bright eyes.

PAN PIPES

Three children of the same village, Peter, James and John, are standing up looking off at something. Ranged side by side they form together the outline of a Pan Pipes with three reeds. Peter, at the left, is a big boy; John, at the right, is small; James, between the two, may consider himself big or little, according as he regards his neighbor on the left or right. It is a situation upon which I invite you to meditate, for it is yours, as it is mine or any one in the world’s. Each one of us, just like James, may consider himself great or small, according as his neighbor cuts a big or little figure in the world.

That’s why one can truthfully say that James is neither big nor little; that he is both big and little. It is as God wishes it to be. He is the last reed of all in our living Pan Pipes.

THREE CHILDREN OF THE SAME VILLAGE, PETER, JAMES AND JOHN, ARE STANDING UP LOOKING OFF AT SOMETHING. RANGED SIDE BY SIDE THEY FORM TOGETHER THE OUTLINE OF A PAN PIPES WITH THREE REEDS.

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But what are his two comrades doing? They are gazing off into space, all three of them. At what? At something which has disappeared below the horizon, something which they can’t see any more but still see in their mind’s eye, and which still dazzles them. Little John has forgotten his eel-skin whip with