and it reminds me of a familiar Swiss scene. The Matterhorn, the Zmutt glacier, and the Dent Blanche make the background: in the foreground daddy with a spade is diverting the runnels to feed another meadow, and Anastasia, aged seven, is not embittering life in Standard I., but superintends the prolonged meal of a tethered cow, and at the same time “minds” Seraphina and Claudinus, aged three and four respectively, who sprawl contentedly on the Alp, and pull to pieces what I call crocus, and the gods call Colchicum Alpinum. They toil not, nor do they thread needles, but they know a good deal about a cow.
Where is Mary? “Oh! Mary, Mary, quite contrairy, did you tell those babies any mortal thing about the cow that they didn’t know before they came in?”
“Well, Mr. Kynnersley, there was that about the tongue.”
“Mary, Mary, did you ever hear of the book—” (I pause, trying to remember the details)—
“Do you mean the Bible, Mr. Kynnersley?”
“No, Mary, nor ‘Bradshaw’: the book that contained things that are true and things that are new: but the things that are true are not new, and the things that are new are not true?”
Mary looks at me in utter bewilderment. I box her pretty ears, pull her pretty hair, and dismiss her, quite unrepentant, to her dinner. The teacher of the second class stands where I left her—“Grieving, if aught inanimate e’er grieves.”
She thinks I was not pleased with her presentment of the camel. I soothe her, and at that moment appears from the end class-room a bright-eyed little body, with a model, and a pile of literature. “Why, Miss Miranda!” I exclaim, “where have you been all the morning?”
“In the class-room with Standard I., Mr. Kynnersley, and you never came near my class.”
How was I to know that there was a class in there? What has she got in her hands? There is a model of a camel, a sketch of its internal arrangements, “Wood’s Natural History,” and rough notes of the lesson. Oh, Miss Miranda!