"No, sister Betsy, I know nothing at all about it, I tell you.... How can I help it? Am I in a condition to teach anybody to read?"
"There are others more to blame than you are, brother, no doubt; ... but let it be who's fault it will, it must not go on so. I suppose you will make no objection to my sending her to school?"
"Oh dear, no! not I; ... but you had better ask Mrs. Compton about it."
"Very well.... But I have your consent, have I not?"
"Dear me, yes, sister Betsy.... Why do you tease me so, making me take the pipe out of my mouth every minute?"
Miss Betsy left the little smoke-dried back parlour appropriated to the master of the house, and made her way to the front room up stairs called the drawing-room, which had been reserved, since time out of mind, for the use of the ladies of the family and their visitors. There she found, as she expected, Mrs. Compton and her daughter amidst an ocean of needle-work, all having reference, more or less, to the ceremony which was to be performed on the following Thursday.
"So, Mrs. Compton," was her salutation to the old lady, and a nod of the head to the young one. "I have been speaking to my brother," continued Miss Betsy, "concerning the education of little Agnes, and he has given his consent to my putting her to school."
"His consent!..." exclaimed Mrs. Compton; "and, pray, is she not my grandchild too?... I think I have as good a right to take care of the child as he has."
"She has a right," replied the spinster, "to expect from both of you a great deal more care than she has found; and were I you, Mrs. Compton, I would take some trouble to conceal from all my friends and acquaintance the fact that, at eleven years of age, my grandchild was unable to read."
"And that's a fact that I can have no need to hide, Miss Betsy, for it's no fact at all—I've seen Martha teaching her scores of times."