“When they are wrong?” replied Lucy.
“Yes,” replied Mary Jay. “It is pretty easy to obey when you think the orders are right; the difficulty comes when you think the orders are wrong. For example, there was a boy once, and his name was Thomas. He used to hold his slate pencil just as we commonly hold a pen. The teacher told him that that wasn’t right. She showed him how a slate pencil ought to be held, and then she went away and left Thomas at his work. He tried the teacher’s way, and said to himself, ‘This isn’t half as good a way as mine. I can’t make the figures half as well.’ Then he changed his pencil, and held it just as he had done it before, that is, as a pen is held.”
“How?” said Lucy.
“I will show you,” said Mary Jay. Then she looked about upon the ground, and found a little sprig, which would answer to represent a pen, and she placed it between the fingers of her right hand, leaning upon her crutch while she did it,—and thus showed Lucy how a pen ought to be held.
“And now,” said Lucy, “show me how the teacher told him to hold it.”
So Mary Jay broke off a short piece of the sprig, which was of suitable length to represent a slate pencil, and she placed that between her fingers, in such a way as to show how a slate pencil ought to be held.
“Now, Thomas,” she continued, “when he found that he could not work so conveniently by holding the pencil in the way that the teacher had directed him to hold it, concluded that she must have been wrong, and so he returned to his old method.”
“Method?” said Lucy, “what is that?”
“The way,—his old way of holding it,” replied Mary Jay.
“And what did the teacher say?” said Lucy.