“Eat, mees,” said the woman, bringing us our food.  “There is tea.  We give our pupils and instructresses tea for supper at six o’clock:  after that there is no more to eat.”

I took a mouthful of the food, but I could hardly swallow it, exhausted as I was from hunger.  The bread was sour and the butter rancid; the tea tasted of garlic.  Minima ate hers ravenously, without uttering a word.  The child had not spoken since we entered these new scenes:  her careworn face was puckered, and her sharp eyes were glancing about her more openly than mine.  As soon as she had finished her hunch of black bread, I signified to Madame Perrier that we were ready to go to our bedroom.

We had the same vaulted passage and cart-shed to traverse on our way back to the other house.  There we were ushered into a room containing only two beds and our two boxes.  I helped Minima to undress, and tucked her up in bed, trying not to see the thin little face and sharp eyes which wanted to meet mine, and look into them.  She put her arm round my neck, and drew down my head to whisper cautiously into my ear.

“They’re cheats,” she said, earnestly, “dreadful cheats.  This isn’t a splendid place at all.  Oh! whatever shall I do?  Shall I have to stay here four years?”

“Hush, Minima!” I answered.  “Perhaps it is better than we think now.  We are tired.  To-morrow we shall see the place better, and it may be splendid after all.  Kiss me, and go to sleep.”

But it was too much for me, far too much.  The long, long journey; the hunger the total destruction of all my hopes; the dreary prospect that stretched before me.  I laid my aching head on my pillow, and cried myself to sleep like a child.

I was awakened, while it was yet quite dark, by the sound of a carpenter’s tool in the room below me.  Almost immediately a loud knock came at my door, and the harsh voice of madame called to us.

“Get up, mees, get up, and come on,” she said; “you make your toilet at the school.  Come on, quick!”

Minima was more dexterous than I in dressing herself in the dark; but we were not long in getting ready.  The air was raw and foggy when we turned out-of-doors, and it was so dark still that we could scarcely discern the outline of the walls and houses.  But madame was waiting to conduct us once more to the other house, and as she did so she volunteered an explanation of their somewhat singular arrangement of dwelling in two houses.  The school, she informed me, was registered in the name of her head governess, not in her own; and as the laws of France prohibited any man dwelling under the same roof with a school of girls, except the husband of the proprietor, they were compelled to rent two dwellings.

“How many pupils have you, madame?” I inquired.

“We have six, mees,” she replied.  “They are here; see them.”

We had reached the house, and she opened the door of a long, low room.  There was an open hearth, with a few logs of green wood upon it, but they were not kindled.  A table ran almost the whole length of the room, with forms on each side.  A high chair or two stood about.  All was comfortless, dreary, and squalid.