B1036 <=> B1038 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 1037]

“Here in St. Petersburg in this said boarding school, it happened that this thirteen-year-old Elizabeth became great friends with another young girl, Mary, who like herself was not yet developed.

“The same year on the day of the ‘spring holiday’ or as it is otherwise called there ‘May Day,’ all the pupils of that higher educational institution were taken according to custom for an excursion into the country, and these two ‘bosom friends’ happened to be in different groups which were walking at some distance from each other.

“Out in the fields Elizabeth chanced to see a certain ‘quadruped animal’ called there a ‘bull,’ and very much wishing for some reason or other that her bosom friend May should not miss seeing this dear quadruped animal, she shouted, ‘Mary! Mary! Look, there goes a bull!’

“No sooner had she uttered the word ‘bull’ than all the, as they are called, ‘governesses’ swarmed round this Elizabeth and flung at her all kinds of cruel preachings.

“How could one utter the word ‘bull’!! Does not that quadruped animal occupy itself with what no well-brought-up person would on any account speak of and still less a pupil of such a ‘genteel institution’?

“While the governesses were persecuting this poor Elizabeth, all the pupils of the institute gathered around and the headmistress herself came up, who, having learned what it was all about, began in her turn to reproach Elizabeth.

“’Shame on you!’ she said. ‘To utter such a word which is considered so very, very indecent.’

“At last Elizabeth could contain herself no longer and she asked amid her tears: