Page:The Professor (1857 Volume 2).djvu/28

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the professor.

variety to the proceedings; it amuses the pupils, and suggests to the parents the idea of exertion and progress."

"Yet when you are tired of a professor or maîtresse, you scruple to dismiss them?"

"No need to have recourse to such extreme measures, I assure you. Allons, monsieur le professeur—asseyons-nous; je vais vous donner une petite leçon dans votre état d'instituteur." (I wish I might write all she said to me in French—it loses sadly by being translated into English.) We had now reached the garden-chair; the directress sat down, and signed to me to sit by her, but I only rested my knee on the seat, and stood leaning my head and arm against the embowering branch of a huge laburnum, whose golden flowers, blent with the dusky green leaves of a lilac-bush, formed a mixed arch of shade and sunshine over the retreat. Mdlle. Reuter sat silent a moment; some novel movements were evidently working in her mind, and they showed