Sam shook his head.
"Just give me hold of the book; will you, Sam?"
Sam complied without word or comment; the Doctor sent it flying through the open window, halfway down the garden. "There!" said he, nodding his head, "that's the fit place for him this day: you've had enough of him at present; go and tell one of the blacks to dig some worms, and we'll make holiday and go a fishing."
Sam looked at the Doctor, and then through the window at his old enemy lying in the middle of the flowerbed. He did not like to see the poor book, so lately his master, crumpled and helpless, fallen from its high estate so suddenly. He would have gone to its assistance, and picked it up and smoothed it, the more so as he felt that he had been beaten.
The Doctor seemed to see everything. "Let it lie here, my child," he said; "you are not in a position to assist a fallen enemy; you are still the vanquished party. Go and get the worms."
He went, and when he came back he found the Doctor sitting beside his father in the verandah, with a penknife in one hand and the ace of spades in the other. He cut the card into squares, triangles, and parallelograms, while Sam looked on, and, demonstrating as he went, fitted them one into the other, till the boy saw his bugbear of a proposition made as clear as day before his eyes.
"Why," said Sam, "that's all as clear as need be. I understand it. Now may I pick the book up, Doctor?"
History was the pleasantest part of all Sam's tasks, for they would sit in the little room given up for a study, with the French windows open looking on the flower-garden, Sam reading aloud and the Doctor making discursive commentaries. At last, one day the Doctor said,—
"My boy, we are making too much of a pleasure of this: you must really learn your dates. Now tell me the date of the accession of Edward the Sixth."
No returns.