In the excitement of getting the half-drowned flies safely across Peter had made a landing-place of his copy-book, and great was the inkiness of it.
“Oh, bleth it!” he said ruefully.
“[‘PETER, LOOK AT YOUR COPY.’]”
Poppet’s head was within an inch of her slate. She was working now at a startling pace, and counting on her fingers in a loud whisper. What would Bunty say if he came home, and she was not there to ask how he had got on, and sympathise with the red marks that were sure to be on his hands?
[50]
]Nellie had translated five lines, and was occupied in a vain search for the dictionary meaning of pourra.
“I believe it’s ‘pour,’ and ‘ra’ is a misprint that’s got tacked on,” she said, “or else this beautiful dictionary has left it out, there are ever so many words I can’t find, Meg.”
“Oh,” said Meg, her patience flying away on sudden wings, “what is the use of anything? I won’t teach you any more, any of you. Peter wrote far better a month ago than he does now; Poppet’s taken an hour to do a row of multiplication by six, and you are looking in the dictionary for pourra. It’s simply wasting all my time to sit here.”
The problem, “who fished the murex up?” had not improved my eldest heroine’s temper. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes sparkled, she threw out her hands in a little dramatic way. “You can go, Peter, you can go and make mud pies of the universe, if you like; Poppet, you can go too, tear your dress, and climb as many trees as you please; Nellie, you can sit in front of the looking-glass the rest of the day and read every novel in the house,—why should I care? I won’t teach any more.”
She flung herself down on the old horse-hair sofa, opened her Browning, and turned her face to the wall.