Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/348

 "Just study, study, study, and practise, practise, practise?" asked the other, astonished.

"Mostly," said Marise.

"Why, that's turrible!" cried Eugenia, beginning to look alarmed.

"That's the way everybody does over here," said Marise.

"They do!" cried Eugenia, aghast and astounded. "Why, I thought they …"

Marise corrected herself, "Oh, of course not. What am I talking about? I mean the kind of folks I know. There are millions of others, I suppose, yes, of course, all the rue de la Paix clientèle, who don't work at all."

Eugenia was relieved at this, and relapsed for a moment into silence, which she finally broke by asking, "Well, wheah would you go to school, if you were me?"

Marise had been thinking of this, and was ready, "There's a very grand private school, I've heard about out at Auteuil, in what was somebody's country estate, when Auteuil was the country, with a château and a park. It's fearfully expensive and so it must be very chic. The girls never go out by themselves, always have a maid, or a teacher with them; the old ideas, aristocratic, you know, that ordinary French people don't hold to any more. Mrs. Marbury could tell you all about it."

"Who? … Mrs. Mahbury?"

"Oh, she's an American, who's always lived over here, in the American colony. Her husband and my father are in the same sort of business. We know her. She'd be sure to know what was chic."

"Well, I'll go to that school," announced Eugenia. "I just knew there'd be a place like that, if I could only find out wheah. I bet you I won't have to study French history theah."

Marise laughed, "Youll probably have to work like a dog, for the teacher who teaches la tenue."

"What's that?"

"Oh, all I know about it is what the dancing teacher used to make us do in the convent-school I went to in Bayonne;