CHAPTER VIII

Pat was sent to a boarding-school near Paris, and it was decided that
Anne should attend St. Cecilia’s School, a select institution where
American girls continued their studies in English and had lessons in
French and music.  Mrs. Patterson herself went to enter Anne as a pupil.

St. Cecilia’s School faced a little park on a quiet street.  It was a red-brick building, with balconies set in recesses between white stuccoed pillars.  Everything about the place was formal and dignified.  The lower floor was occupied by parlors, offices, class-rooms, and dining-rooms.  Through wide-open doors at the end of the hall, Mrs. Patterson and Anne had a pleasant view of the long piazza at the back of the house.  It opened on a grass-plot edged with flowerbeds.  The neat gravel paths ended in short flights of steps, under rose-covered archways, that led down a terrace to the playground.

While they waited in a handsome, formal parlor for Mademoiselle Duroc, Mrs. Patterson chatted pleasantly to Anne about the swings and arbors and pear-trees on the playground.  But Anne sat silent, with a lump in her throat, and clutched her friend’s hand tighter and tighter, while she watched for the principal’s entrance as she would have watched for an ogre in whose den she had been trapped.  At last—­it was really in a very few minutes—­Mademoiselle Duroc entered the room.  While she talked with Mrs. Patterson, Anne regarded her with awe.

Like her surroundings, Mademoiselle was formal and handsome.  She was of middle height, but she carried herself with such stately grace that she impressed Anne as being very tall.  Her glossy hair, of which no one ever saw a strand out of place, was arranged in elaborate waves and coils supported by a tall shell comb.  She wore a very long, very stiff black silk gown trimmed with beads and lace, and she had a purple silk shawl around her shoulders.  When she moved, her skirts rustled in a stately fashion and sent forth a stately odor of sandalwood.

“I shall have to do whatever she tells me,” Anne knew at once.  “If she tells me to walk in the fire, I shall have to go.”

That was the impression Mademoiselle Duroc always made on people.  She was a born general, and if she had been a man and had lived a century earlier, she would have been one of the great Napoleon’s marshals and led a freezing, starving little band to impossible victories;—­so Miss Morris said.  Miss Morris, a stout, middle-aged, New England lady, was Mademoiselle’s assistant.  She had a kind heart, but the girls thought her cross because she was always making a worried effort to secure the order and attention which came of themselves as soon as Mademoiselle entered the study-hall.  When Miss Morris scolded—­which was often, as Anne was to learn—­her face grew very red and her voice very rough, and she flapped her arms in a peculiar way.  Anne did not like to be scolded but she liked to watch Miss Morris when she was angry; it was strange and interesting to see a person look so much like a turkey-cock.