"He is first rate," Bob reported to his sister, as they sat down to dinner, at one o'clock. "You would hardly believe that I can say a dozen little sentences, already; and can understand him, when he says them. He says, in a week, we shall be able to get to talk together.
"I wonder they don't teach Latin like that. Why, I shall know in two or three months as much Spanish--and more, ever so much more--than I do Latin, after grinding away at it for the last seven or eight years."
"Well, that is satisfactory. I only hope the other will turn out as well."
As Mrs. O'Halloran sat that evening, with her work in her hand, on the terrace; with her husband, smoking a cigar, beside her. She paused, several times, as she heard a burst of laughter.
"That doesn't sound like master and pupil," she said, sharply, after an unusually loud laugh from below.
"More the pity, Carrie. Why on earth shouldn't a master be capable of a joke? Do you think one does not learn all the faster, when the lecture is pleasant? I know I would, myself. I never could see why a man should look as if he was going to an execution, when he wants to instil knowledge."
"But it is not usual, Gerald," Carrie remonstrated, no other argument occurring to her.
"But that doesn't prove that it's wrong. Why a boy should be driven worse than a donkey, and thrashed until his life is a burden to him, and he hates his lessons and hates his master, beats me entirely. Some day they will go more sensibly to work.
"You see, in the old times, Carrie, men used to beat their wives; and you don't think the women were any the better for it, do you?"
"Of course they weren't," Carrie said, indignantly.