4
It was a fool’s errand.... To undertake to go to the German school and teach ... to be going there ... with nothing to give. The moment would come when there would be a class sitting round a table waiting for her to speak. She imagined one of the rooms at the old school, full of scornful girls.... How was English taught? How did you begin? English grammar ... in German? Her heart beat in her throat. She had never thought of that ... the rules of English grammar? Parsing and analysis.... Anglo-Saxon prefixes and suffixes ... gerundial infinitive.... It was too late to look anything up. Perhaps there would be a class to-morrow.... The German lessons at school had been dreadfully good.... Fräulein’s grave face ... her perfect knowledge of every rule ... her clear explanations in English ... her examples.... All these things were there, in English grammar.... And she had undertaken to teach them and could not even speak German.
Monsieur ... had talked French all the time ... dictées ... lectures ... Le Conscrit ... Waterloo ... La Maison Déserte ... his careful voice reading on and on ... until the room disappeared.... She must do that for her German girls. Read English to them and make them happy.... But first there must be verbs ... there had been cahiers of them ... first, second, third conjugation.... It was impudence, an impudent invasion ... the dreadful clever, foreign school.... They would laugh at her.... She began to repeat the English alphabet.... She doubted whether, faced with a class, she could reach the end without a mistake.... She reached Z and went on to the parts of speech.