"
"Are you very sick, Mademoiselle?" Paula asked.
"Oh, I feel very much better today. I have suffered greatly. I must get
better quickly. Madame Boudre, the principal, wrote me yesterday that she
hoped I would be back very soon in my place in the class. Madame Boudre
doesn't care to have sick people," and our teacher looked toward the window
with its little white curtains and sighed deeply. Gabriel came near the
bed, "Don't worry about that, sister; when I get big I will work for you
and become rich, and then you won't need to go to school at all."
How many things I was discovering, I who thought that the life of the
school-teacher was a bed of roses.
"No, never any more," continued the little boy, "I know why you're sick.
It's because the school-children trouble you, and as you told me it gave
you so much pain to punish them, but when I get big you shall see, as I
said before."
Mlle. Virtud looked at the little face with its great earnest eyes.
"I'm afraid you will have to wait a long, long time," she said tenderly, "I
don't think I ever told you young ladies that I had a little brother at
home. He is the youngest of our family, and I am the oldest.
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