"I never seem able to please her," I grumbled one day at breakfast-time. "If I say my lessons correctly she tells me I'm twitching my hands or wrinkling my forehead; and then if I try to think about my hands and my forehead the lessons go right out of my mind, so I'm wrong either way. It seems no use trying."
"She's horribly mean," sighed Janet, who suffered at times herself. "My exercise was quite right yesterday, but she made me copy it all out again, just because I had four mistakes in spelling. It was really too bad."
"I could forgive her the exercises," said Millicent, "if she'd only make stronger coffee. This cup of mine is simply dish-water. I wish Mrs. Marshall would come down again at breakfast-time, it used to be ever so much better when she poured out."
"Let us get up a round robin and beg her to come!" laughed Cathy. "We could say we'd missed her charming conversation."
"Quietly! Quietly!" said Miss Percy from the other end of the table, for Cathy had raised her voice above the low undertone in which we had been speaking.
"We might ask her to give 'coffee' as the next conversation topic," said Janet, "and then Millicent could announce that she liked it strong, as her intelligent remark."
"It's the chicory I object to," said Millicent; "I loathe the smell of it. I'm sure it oughtn't to have any in. Ought it, Phil?"
"Certainly not," I replied. "I wish you could have tasted the coffee we used to have at San Carlos. You'd never forget it. It came from our own plantations, and Pedro used to roast it and grind it just before he poured the water on. I've often watched him make it. That was really worth calling coffee."
"Pity we can't import him over here to give the cook a lesson," said Janet. "But I expect there's something in the quality, and how much you put in the pot. Will you have another cup, Milly?"
"No, thank you! One is enough of this brew. Here comes the bread-and-butter plate. I hope it'll all be finished before it comes to me, for I don't want any more."