“Of course,” Milly replied, looking at Winnie in a puzzled way. “And I am sure,” she added hopefully, “that Mr. Mudge will find the guilty individual soon, if he is as keen as you all seem to think him. I really dread meeting him, and I am glad he has gone away for to-day. There goes the supper bell. What a long day this has been!”
After supper Milly woke to a consciousness that she had not prepared one of her lessons for the next day. She sat puckering her pretty forehead into ugly wrinkles, and repeating helplessly, “‘Populi Romani!’ I am sure I’ve had that before.” Then she began a wild attempt at translation, with manifold running comments. “‘Because Ariovistus, King of the Germans, had sat down on their boundaries—’ Now, was there anything ever so absurd as that? Why did old Ariovistus want to sit down on their boundaries?”
“Perhaps the word doesn’t mean boundaries here,” Adelaide suggested, and Milly turned patiently to her lexicon—“If finibus comes from finitimus it may mean neighbors—and then Ariovistus sat down on his neighbors; well I must say that was cool——”
Milly worked on for a little while in silence, and then exclaimed, “I’m getting into the sensibility of it now—how’s this? ‘These things having been known, Cæsar confirmed the mind of all Gaul with words.’ He was always very generous of his words. We have a review to-morrow, and the ridiculosity of the whole thing comes out. Now just listen to this: ‘Wherefore it pleased him to send legates to Ariovistus, who should ask him to appoint some place in the middle of the others for a colloquy. To these legates he responded if it was too much trouble for him to come to himself, himself would come to him and he—Cæsar—would then find out who ought to do the coming. Besides, he would admire to see all Gaul in a row, and it was no business of Cæsar’s or his old Populo Romano.’ I rather like his pluck but I’m afraid my translation is rather free. Then here is a place that I am not quite sure about; ‘The Helvetians, the Tulingians, and the Lotobigians, and all the other igians, in their boundaries or something, whence they had something else—he commanded to—thingummy; and because all their fruits were—were—frost bitten, I guess, and at home nothing was which could tolerate hunger—he commanded the other ninkums that they should make for them copious corn—’ I perfectly hate Cæsar. He was always boasting of his own benefits and clemency to one tribe in making another support it, and then ‘pacifying’ the other tribes by slaying a few thousand of their soldiers, and I just don’t see the use of our muddling our heads with what that stupid, cruel, conceited old bandit did, anyhow. But if I don’t know this lesson I shall not be able to pass in examination, and you will all graduate and leave me behind for ages and ages——”
Ordinarily Winnie could not have resisted such an appeal as this. I have known her to patiently translate all of Milly’s lessons for her, and then as patiently explain them to her over and over again, until some faint idea of their meaning had penetrated her befogged little brain. And having spent the evening thus, go unprepared to her geometry, and stoically receive a cipher as her class mark, and see Cynthia carry off the honors of the day. But to-night Winnie did not seem to see the forget-me-not eyes turned appealingly to her. She appeared to be completely absorbed in her Cicero. I endured Milly’s frowns as long as I could, and finally pushed aside my own studies, and said, “Come into my bedroom where we will not disturb the other girls, and I will straighten it out for you.”
Milly was delighted. She threw her arms around my neck and thrust some cream peppermints into my pocket.
We were in the midst of Cæsar’s negotiations with Ariovistus, and had nearly finished the paragraph, when Milly suddenly looked up.
“Tib,” she said, “do you know whatever became of Madame Celeste’s last bill? I thought I put it in my bureau drawer, but I must have left it around somewhere. Have you seen it? I can’t find it.”
“Then you could not pay it this afternoon?” I asked evasively.
“Oh, yes! she made out another bill and receipted it for me, but I want to be sure that the first one is destroyed.”