“Yes,” replied Miss Anne, “they were, I presume, as difficult sums as you could make, without having any carrying. In fact, the first attempts which you made to set sums, you got the figures so many, and of so high value, that you couldn’t add them without carrying; so you reduced them by little and little, until you just got the figures barely small enough to make the amount less than ten; and thus you made the sums as difficult as they could be made, without carrying; and this you gave her for her first lesson. The thing which you were to come to in the end, you took as the beginning.
“Then, besides this, I think you were unreasonable in being dissatisfied with her. When your mother promised you a paint-box, if you would teach her to add such sums, was it reasonable to expect that she could know how to do it already?”
“Why—no,” said Royal, hesitatingly.
“And yet you did expect it. You were employed to go over a process with her, which would end in her knowing how to do a certain thing; and then you were vexed and out of humor with her, for not knowing how to do the thing at the outset, before you had gone over the process at all.”
“Why, I wasn’t out of humor, Miss Anne,” said Royal.
“I thought you were,” replied Miss Anne; “at any rate, you spoke unkindly to her, and wounded her feelings.”
Here there was a pause. Royal was really sorry for what he had done. He saw very clearly the unreasonableness and folly of it. But he did not know exactly what to do.
“Well, Miss Anne,” said he at length, “how should you have managed it?”
“I,” replied Miss Anne, “should have begun at the beginning, instead of at the end.”
“And how would you have begun at the beginning?”