"You said Wednesday and Saturday, an' this is only Tuesday, but I can't get my lesson for termorrer 'less someone helps me," he said.
"There is no reason why you may not stay to-night," Aunt Judith said, kindly, "and now tell me what it was that made the arithmetic so hard today."
"She asked me if I had ten pears, and I wanted to keep one for myself, and divide the others between two of my friends, how many would I give each, and I told her I'd keep more than one for myself, and I didn't know two anybodies I'd want to give the others to, and then they all laughed. I don't see why."
Aunt Judith was trying not to laugh as heartily as the little pupils whose merriment had so annoyed Gyp.
"And the next thing she asked was about dividing pears, too. Don't folks divide anything but pears? They don't in the arithmetic!"
"Oh, Gyp, Gyp!" cried Aunt Judith, and the puzzled boy laughed with her, because he could not help it.
He did not mind her laughter. Indeed, he already felt better acquainted with her, because they had laughed together. The laughter of the little pupils had maddened him, but that was different.
"They laughed at me, but you laugh with me," he said, with quick understanding.
"And I'll work with you, Gyp," was the pleasant answer, and the boy at once opened his book.
When Gyp took his cap and started for home, after two hours spent at the cottage, he had a better understanding of figures, and their use, and the actual worth of arithmetic, than he had obtained, thus far, in his daily attendance at school.