more it will be another story. costume of Folly, these pink your little cap and bells."

Look at this lovely silk stockings and

She had lifted the costume and spread it out setting the bells a-tinkling and Ida could not resist its glitter.

While his mother was dressing, Jack went alone into her boudoir.

The cozy coquettish little room, crowded with bric-à-brac was lighted only by a few dim rays from a street-lamp near by. Sadly, his forehead pressed against the window-pane, the child began to think about the emotions of this day, and by degrees, though he scarcely knew why, he felt that he was indeed the "poor child" of whom the priest had spoken with such compassion.

Strange to hear oneself pitied when he imagines himself so happy! It seems, then, that there are misfortunes so well concealed that he who is the cause of them, or merely their victim, does not even surmise them!

The door opened. His mother was ready.

"Come in, Master Jack, and see how beautiful it is!"

Oh, what a charming Folly, all in pink and silver and satin. What a pretty, rustling of spangles at every movement she made!

The child looked and looked, full of admiration, and the mother, powdered, volatile and light-hearted, her cap and bells in her hand beamed upon Jack, smiled at her own image in the glass, troubling herself no further to ask the

Almighty what she had done that she should be so unhappy.

Then Constant threw a warm opera-cloak over her shoulders and accompanied her mistress to the carriage, while Jack, leaning upon the balustrade, heard those two tiny pink slippers embroidered in silver, descend the staircase as lightly as if they already beat time to the dance, while they bore his mother away, far away from him, to balls which were not for children. When he could hear the tinkling of the bells no longer, he returned listlessly, and for the first time in his life felt disturbed at being deserted, though this occurred every night.

When Madame de Barancy dined out, Jack was intrusted to the care of Mademoiselle Constant. "She will dine with you," said the mother. In the dining-room, which seemed only too large upon such occasions, covers were laid for two, but it frequently happened, that Constant, who did not much relish these tête-à-tête with the boy, took their plates into the kitchen, and they dined in the basement in company with the servants.

A regular orgy it was. The greasy, stained table, loaded with food, was as disorderly as the hilarity of the guests. Of course the factotum presided, and did not hesitate to amuse her companions with the tale of her mistress's adventures using obscure phrases, however, in such a manner that the child need not be startled.

That evening the refusal received at Vaugirard was discussed at great length in the basement.

Augustin, the coachman, insisted that it was a lucky thing, they would have made a Jesuit, a hypocrite of the boy!

Mademoiselle Constant protested. To be sure, she had not made her religion, but she did not wish to hear others abuse it. Then the conversation turned upon something else, to Jack's great disappointment, for he had listened with open ears, hoping to learn why the priest, who seemed so kind, had refused to admit him.

For a time there was no further question of Jack or of his mother, but the religious convictions of each became the subject of discussion. The coachman, Augustin, when half drunk, entertained remarkable views of his own. His God, he affirmed, was the sun! He knew of no other.

"I am like the elephants, I adore the sun," he repeated with drunken persistency. At last some one asked him where he had ever seen that elephants adore the sun.

"I saw one once in a photograph," he answered with drunken majesty.

Upon which Mademoiselle Constant accused him of impiety and atheism, while the cook, a stout Picardy woman, full of peasant astuteness, repeated to both: "I tell you, it's wrong, you must not discuss the faith!"

And Jack, what was he doing all this time?

Seated at the end of the table, overcome by the heat of the kitchen and the interminable discussions of these beasts, with his face resting upon his arm, his golden curls outspread upon his

velvet sleeves, he grew drowsy. In that confused, tired, uncomfortable state which precedes a nap taken in a chair, he heard, but indistinctly, the whisperings of the servants. It seemed to him that some one was talking about him, but the voices sounded far, far away, as if in a mist.

"Whose child is he, the darling?" asked the cook.

"I don't know," answered Constant, "but one thing is sure enough he can't stay here, and she has asked me to hunt up a school for him."

- not

Between two hiccups, the coachman stammered: "Now wait a bit, wait a bit! I think I know of a famous school that is just the one for your bubu-business. It is called the College - no the college - the Gymnase Moronval; for all that, it is a College. When I was at the Saïd's, my Egyptians, I took the boy to that school every day, and the master, a kind of half-breed, used to give me prospectuses. I ought to have one about me still."

He hunted in his pocket-book, among some old dingy papers which he spread upon the table, and finally seized one dirtier than the rest.

"Look," he said, triumphantly and began to read, -to spell out, rather, with great difficulty: "Moronval - Gym In the

Gymnase.

"Give me that said Mademoiselle Constant, and taking out of his hand she read in a single breath:

"Gymnase Moronval, 25 Avenue Montaigne. —In

the most beautiful quarter of Paris. - A family institution. Spacious garden. Number of pupils limited. Course in French pronunciation according to the Moronval-Decostère method. Rectification of foreign and provincial accents a specialty. Correction of defective pronunciation of all sorts by teaching the proper position of the vocal organs."

Mademoiselle Constant paused to breathe, and then said to the others:

"Now this seems to me to be just the thing." "I think so," said the Picarde, opening her eyes widely.

Proper position of the vocal organs. Lessons in reading aloud with expression,— principles of articulation and respiration."

The reading of the prospectus continued, but Jack heard no more.

He was fast asleep and dreaming.

Yes! while his future was being discussed around this vile kitchen-table, while his mother, a pink image of Folly, was amusing herself madly, no one knew where, he was dreaming of the priest he had seen that afternoon, dreaming of that gentle penetrating voice that had said:

66 'Poor child!"