CHAPTER XII.
A VISIT TO ARITHMETIC.
T'S a dreadful pull up this staircase!" exclaimed Lubin, as panting and puffing he stopped half-way, his fat round face flushed with fatigue till it looked almost the colour of a cock's comb.
"It is dreadfully tiring!" sighed Nelly, pausing a moment to take breath.
"It is worse than the ladder of Spelling!" cried Lubin. "I vote that we go back at once."
"Oh no, dear Lubin!" said his sister, immediately starting again on her weary ascent—"perseverance, you know, conquers difficulties;" and as she uttered the words, the lame girl stumbled at that step seven times eight.
"You'll never succeed," observed Lubin.
"I'll try again," said the patient Nelly; and slowly but steadily she mounted.
Her example encouraged her brother to follow.
"I say, Nelly," observed Lubin, "what a plague all this education furnishing is! What lucky dogs those savages are who live in caves that want no fittings, and who have never heard of Reading papers, or ladders of Spelling, or this horrible Multiplication!"