"I do consent most willingly and gratefully. The arrangement will be a delightful one for me, and I am sure for Netta."
Netta, who had been standing where she could watch the lips of both speakers, clapped her hands joyously. "Oh, auntie, it will be splendid! Fancy having a house, and a garden, and a pony-chaise!"
"You understand all we have been saying then, Netta?"
"I understand it all," the girl replied. "I did not catch every word, but quite enough to know all that you were saying."
"That certainly is a proof of the goodness of the system," Mr. Covington said, speaking for the first time. "How long have you been learning?"
"Eighteen months, sir. We have been here two years, but I was six months learning German before I knew enough to begin, and for the next six months I could not get on very fast, as there were so many words that I did not know, so that really I have only been a year at it. The professor says that in another year I shall be nearly perfect and fit to begin to teach; and he has no doubt that he will be able to find me a situation where I can teach in the daytime and still live with my aunt."
In a week the necessary arrangements were all made. A pretty, furnished house, a quarter of a mile out of town, with a large garden and stables, had been taken, and Netta and Hilda had already become friends, for as the former had learned to talk with her fingers before she came out she was able to keep up her share of the conversation by that means while Hilda talked in reply.
"The fingers are useful as a help at first," Netta said, "but Professor Menzel will not allow any of his pupils to use their fingers, because they come to rely upon them instead of watching the lips."