“I’m sure you said tens once,” said injured innocence.
“That was in an addition sum. See, here it is quite different. I told you.”
Bessie put on a vacant stare. She was not going to attend to what she did not like.
Miss Fosbrook saw the face. She absolutely shrank from provoking another fit of crying, and went quickly through the explanation. She saw that her words might as well have been spoken to the slate. Bessie neither listened nor took them in. Not all her love for her dear Christabel Angela could stir her up to make one effort contrary to her inclinations. The slate was given back to her, she wiped out the sum in a pet, and ran away.
Miss Fosbrook turned round, David, whose lessons had been perfectly repeated an hour ago, was sitting cross-legged in the window, with his slate and pencil, and a basket of bricks, his great delight, which he was placing in rows.
“Miss Fosbrook,” said he, “isn’t this it? Twelve bricks; take away those seven, then—1, 2, 3, 4, 5—the twelve is only 5: the 10 is gone, isn’t it? so you must leave one out of the next figure in the upper line of the sum.”
Now Davy had only begun arithmetic on the governess’s arrival, but he had learnt numeration and addition in her way. She was so delighted, that she stooped down and kissed him, saying, “Quite right, my little man.”
Davy rather disapproved of the kiss, and rubbed his brown-holland elbow over his face, as if to clear it off.
“Well,” thought Christabel, as she hurried away for five minutes’ peace in her own room before the dinner-bell, “it is a comfort to have one pupil whose whole endeavour is not to frustrate one’s attempts to educate him.”
Poor young thing! that one little bit of sense had quite cheered her up. Otherwise she was not one whit less weary than the children. She had been learning a very tough lesson too—much harder than any of theirs; and she was not at all certain that she had learnt it right.