'I could have learnt twice as many phrases if I'd known how to pronounce them!'
In fact, beginning to learn at an age when she was able to understand, and impelled by a strong sense of her own deficiencies, she learnt so fast and so well that her education soon became the strongest interest of my life, and when my fear that she would tire had worn away, I gave whole hours to considering what I should teach her, and to preparing myself for her lessons. As winter drew on, the darkening days gave us both the excuse we wanted for longer working hours. From three to half-past six we now sat together in the study, reading, writing, translating. When I found her willing I had added Latin to her studies, and we diligently plodded through a course of reading arbitrarily marked out by me, and followed by my pupil with enthusiastic docility.
All thoughts of leaving Ballater for the winter had now disappeared from my mind. I was happier in my new occupation than I remembered to have been before, and as I saw spring approaching, I regretted the short days, which had been brighter to me than midsummer.
'I mustn't keep you indoors so long now, Babiole,' I said to her one afternoon in the first days of April. 'I have been making you work too hard lately, and you must go and get back your roses on the hills.'
I saw the light come over the girl's face as she looked out of the window, and, with a pang of self-reproach, I felt that, in spite of herself, the earnest little student had been waiting eagerly for some such words as these.
'O—h—h,' she whispered, in a long-drawn breath of pleasure, 'it must be lovely up among the pine-woods now!'
I said nothing, and she turned round to me with a mistrustful inquiring face. I went on looking over an exercise she had written, as if absorbed in that occupation. But the little one's perceptions were too keen for me. She was down on her knees on the floor beside my chair in a moment, with a most downcast face, her eyes full of tears.
'Oh, Mr. Maude, what an ungrateful little wretch you must think me!'
I was so much moved that I could not take her pretty apology quietly. I burst out into a shout of laughter.
'Why, Babiole, you must think me an ogre! You don't really imagine I wanted to keep you chained to the desk all the summer!'