(The toothache was the only malady to which Tom had ever been subject.)
“Euclid, my lad,—why, what’s that?” said Mr Tulliver.
“Oh, I don’t know; it’s definitions, and axioms, and triangles, and things. It’s a book I’ve got to learn in—there’s no sense in it.”
“Go, go!” said Mr Tulliver, reprovingly; “you mustn’t say so. You must learn what your master tells you. He knows what it’s right for you to learn.”
“I’ll help you now, Tom,” said Maggie, with a little air of patronizing consolation. “I’m come to stay ever so long, if Mrs Stelling asks me. I’ve brought my box and my pinafores, haven’t I, father?”
“You help me, you silly little thing!” said Tom, in such high spirits at this announcement that he quite enjoyed the idea of confounding Maggie by showing her a page of Euclid. “I should like to see you doing one of my lessons! Why, I learn Latin too! Girls never learn such things. They’re too silly.”
“I know what Latin is very well,” said Maggie, confidently, “Latin’s a language. There are Latin words in the Dictionary. There’s bonus, a gift.”
“Now, you’re just wrong there, Miss Maggie!” said Tom, secretly astonished. “You think you’re very wise! But ‘bonus’ means ‘good,’ as it happens,—bonus, bona, bonum.”
“Well, that’s no reason why it shouldn’t mean ‘gift,’” said Maggie, stoutly. “It may mean several things; almost every word does. There’s ‘lawn,’—it means the grass-plot, as well as the stuff pocket handkerchiefs are made of.”
“Well done, little ’un,” said Mr Tulliver, laughing, while Tom felt rather disgusted with Maggie’s knowingness, though beyond measure cheerful at the thought that she was going to stay with him. Her conceit would soon be overawed by the actual inspection of his books.