‘Oh! but he showed me how to set it better,’ said Phyllis, ‘and he said that when he learnt the beginning of fractions, he thought them as hard as I do.’
‘Fractions!’ said Jane, ‘you do not fancy you have come to fractions yet! Fine work you will make of them when you do!’
In the evening, as soon as the children were gone to bed, Jane took a paper out of her work-basket, saying, ‘There, Emily, is my account of Phyl’s scrapes through this whole week; I told you I should write them all down.’
‘How kind!’ muttered Claude.
Regardless of her brother, who had not looked up from his book, Jane began reading her list of poor Phyllis’s misadventures. ‘On Monday she tore her frock by climbing a laurel-tree, to look at a blackbird’s nest.’
‘I gave her leave,’ said Emily. ‘Rachel had ordered her not to climb; and she was crying because she could not see the nest that Wat Greenwood had found.’
‘On Tuesday she cried over her French grammar, and tore a leaf out of the old spelling-book.’
‘That was nearly out before,’ said Emily, ‘Maurice and Redgie spoilt that long ago.’
‘I do not know of anything on Wednesday, but on Thursday she threw Ada down the steps out of the nursery.’
‘Oh! that accounts for the dreadful screaming that I heard,’ said Claude; ‘I forgot to ask the meaning of it.’