"How do you get along?" From motives of delicacy, Pet never added, "in your studies."
"Well, I don't mind tellin' you, as you are my confidential little friend." Here Mrs. Crull would look around cautiously, to be sure no one was listening. "The other studies isn't so hard, but grammar knocks me." (Mrs. Crull's nominatives and verbs were irreconcilable.)
Then Pet would say, telling an innocent fib:
"I don't observe anything very wrong, Mrs. Crull."
"Ha! ha! there you are flattering me, you little chick. I know, or think, I have improved a good deal with our dear Miss Pillbody; but a smart little scholar like you must see lots of mistakes in me."
At this point, Pet would blush, and murmur, "No--no!"
"Humbug!" Mrs. Crull would say. "I know my incurable faults, and I know that you know 'em. But Lor' bless you, child! there is plenty of ladies in good s'ciety" (Mrs. C. always slurred on the first syllable of that word) "who talk as bad as me. Their husbands, just like mine, got rich suddenly, you see. I tell you, I was 'stonished to find how many of 'em there was. They are thicker'n blackberries. I found out something else, too." Here Mrs. Crull would shake her head knowingly, like one who had discovered a great truth.
Pet would know what was coming, but would ask: "Pray, what is it, Mrs. Crull?"
"Why, I found out that, if you give good dinners and big parties, and keep a carriage, and have a conservatory, and rent a pew up near the altar, your little shortcomin's in grammar isn't no objection to you. 'Money makes the mare go.' However, eddication, as Miss Pillbody says, is a good thing of itself, and I shall keep on tryin' to get it."
These conversations always ended by an invitation to Pet to visit Mrs. Crull. "I'll have our carriage call for you," she would say, "at your father's house. We have no children, you know, and the old man would be very good to you; though, of course, it wouldn't do to hint about the school. But I can trust my little friend for that. Come, now, won't you?"