“You are not, Dexter. You always learn easily enough with me.”
“Yes, with you,” said the boy quickly, “but you don’t want me to say angle ABC is equal to the angle CBA, and all such stuff as that.”
“Don’t call it stuff,” said Helen, smiling in spite of herself; “it is Geometry.”
“But it is rum stuff all the same. What’s the use of my learning about straight lines and squares and angles?”
“But you are behind with your Algebra too.”
“Yes,” sighed Dexter, “I’m just as stupid over that.”
“Now, Dexter!”
“But I am, quite. Why can’t I go on finding out things by Arithmetic, as we used at the schools? It was bother enough to learn that. Oh, what a lot of caning I had over nine times!”
“Over nine times!” said Helen.
“Over a hundred, I should say,” cried Dexter. “I mean with strokes on the hand, and taps on the head, and over the shoulders—counting ’em altogether; and wasn’t I glad when I knew it all, and twelve times too, and somebody else used to get it instead of me.”