“Then tell us,” said the inspector, smiling.
“Four yards!” cried Feelier triumphantly.
“I said what proportion, my good girl; do you not know what I mean by proportion?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, what!”
“Rule o’ three sums, same as boys learn.”
“Tut-tut-tut! this is very sad,” said the inspector, shaking his head, a motion that seemed to be infectious, for it was taken up by Miss Rebecca, communicated to Miss Beatrice, and then caught up by little Miss Burge, whose head-shaking was, however, meant to be in sympathy with Hazel.
“I wish he’d let me ask the girls some queshtuns, Betsey,” whispered Mr William Forth Burge, as he saw the inspector’s pencil going; “I could make them answer better than that.”
But the visitor had no intention of choosing a deputy, and he went on asking several more questions of a similar class, relating to cutting out and making up, not one of which produced a satisfactory answer; and the vicar looked very grave as he saw entries that he knew to be unfavourable made with the gold pencil-case.
Then the girls had to read, and got on better; but as soon as the inspector began to ask scriptural questions the class appeared to have run wild, and the answers were of the most astonishing nature. Simple matters of knowledge that they knew perfectly the day before, seemed to have passed entirely out of the girls’ minds, and they guessed and answered at random. Sometimes a correct reply was given, but whenever it came to the turn of Feelier Potts, if she did happen to know, she managed to pervert the answer.