Tom and Maggie Tulliver

by George Eliot

"Here, Magsie, come and hear if I can say this."

Maggie obeyed, and took the open book.

"Where do you begin, Tom?"

"Oh, I begin at 'Appellativa arborum,' because I say all over again what I've been learning this week."

Tom sailed along pretty well for three lines, and then he stuck fast.

"There, you needn't laugh at me, Tom, for you didn't remember it at all, you see."

"Phee-e-e-h! I told you girls couldn't learn Latin."

"Very well, then," said Maggie, pouting. "I can say it as well as you can. And you don't mind your stops. For you ought to stop twice as long at a semicolon as you do at a comma, and you make the longest stops where there ought to be no stops at all."