Lucy would not hear of it for some time, but at last Leslie overcame her scruples, and with a little blush repeated some of the paragraphs she had got off by heart.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE ENCOUNTER.
Reading for an exam, even a little one, is awful work. If it were only one or two subjects which one had to master it would not be so bad; but when there are six or a dozen then the trouble comes in. As fast as one subject is learned it is driven out of its place in the memory by a second, and the second by the third, and so on. Then one has to go back and begin all over again, until they all get mixed up, and one feels it will be impossible to ever get them properly sorted and arranged.
The more Leslie saw of this pleasant-faced, kind-hearted girl, the more she admired and wondered at her patience and courage.
They lit the lamp and worked through the evening, though Lucy over and over again protested that it was both wicked and cruel to take advantage of Leslie's good nature; and at last she swept all the books together, and declared that Leslie should not touch another.
"But if you knew what a help it has been to me!" she exclaimed gratefully.
"And to me," said Leslie with a smile. "It is I who ought to be grateful—and, indeed, I am, for I should have been sitting upstairs alone with nothing to do but think, think!"
"Ah, that is the worst of it," said Lucy gravely. "That is why I am so glad I am obliged to work! You see I haven't the time to think; I keep on and on, like the man who climbed the Alps—what was his name, Excelsior?"