I come into the second-best parlor after breakfast with my books and an exercise-book and a slate. My mother is ready for me at her writing-desk, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone in his easy-chair by the window, though he pretends to be reading a book, or as Miss Murdstone, sitting near my mother, stringing steel beads. The very sight of these two has such an influence over me that I begin to feel the words I have been at infinite pains to get into my head all sliding away and going I don't know where. I wonder where they do go, by the bye?
I hand the first book to my mother. Perhaps it is a grammar, perhaps a history or geography. I take a last drowning look at the page as I give it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing pace while I have got it fresh. I trip over a word. Mr. Murdstone looks up. I trip over another word. Miss Murdstone looks up. I redden, tumble over half-a-dozen words, and stop. I think my mother would show me the book if she dared, but she does not dare, and she says softly:
"Oh, Davy! Davy!"
"Now, Clara," says Mr. Murdstone, "be firm with the boy. Don't say 'Oh, Davy, Davy!' That's childish. He knows his lesson, or he does not know it."
"He does not know it," Miss Murdstone interposes, awfully.
"I am really afraid he does not," says my mother.
"Then you see, Clara," returns Miss Murdstone, "you should just give him the book back and make him know it."
"Yes, certainly," says my mother; "that is what I intend to do, my dear Jane. Now, Davy, try once more, and don't be stupid."
The natural result of this treatment was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged; and my temper was not improved by the sense that I was daily shut out from my mother.
One morning, after about six months of these lessons, when I went into the parlor with my books, I found my mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr. Murdstone binding something round the bottom of a cane,—a lithe and limber cane, which he left off binding when I came in, and poised and switched in the air.