Lucy liked school better lately than she ever had before, because it occupied her mind and kept it from straying into what were often unhappy directions. The hours the four girls spent with Miss Ellis were very pleasant ones, and the mornings usually ended soon enough for everybody. Lucy did object to the Latin days, for it took her a whole hour of the afternoon before to prepare her lesson. To-day Miss Ellis gave out a whole page of sentences, and Lucy said emphatically to Julia, as the girls were walking home:
"You have simply got to come over after lunch and help me with that Latin. I'll show you about the arm-bandaging for next week, if you will."
Julia was willing to do almost anything for her friend these days, and she answered, glad of the opportunity, "Of course I'll help you. We'll do it together. I can come over early."
Languages were Julia's strong point. She could speak French almost as well as Marian, and when the three girls got together that afternoon the lesson did not take long. As Marian folded up her paper she said thoughtfully:
"I suppose you've always gone to school and had to do your lessons. It's funny. I thought you worked dreadfully hard when I began studying here in September. I kept on only because I was ashamed not to be able to do as much as the rest of you."
"Why, you've always had a governess, Marian, haven't you?" asked Lucy, surprised.
"Oh, yes. But she didn't dare make me work hard. Once she did and I got sick and scared her and Father almost to death. It was at Lucerne, two years ago, and the whole rest of the year I just fooled along. If she tried to begin real lessons I looked doubtful about it and she gave right in."
"That was easy," said Julia, laughing. "I wish I'd been brought up that way. But you seem to know a good deal, in spite of it."
"That's just from traveling and reading, or what Father has told me." Marian called this back from her own room, where she had gone to take off her school dress. "I never really worked at anything unless I wanted to."
"You're not so awfully spoiled, considering," said Lucy, leaning back in her chair and watching Marian lazily, as she came in, slipping over her head the dress she had brought from her room.