Gatty (demurely).—"If you please, little Mother, we can't."
Schillie.—"Cannot! What stops you, I should like to know? Nothing but your own laziness, keeping me waiting here all day."
Gatty (still more meekly).—"If you please, little Mother, you have got the book."
Schillie.—"Got the book! Who wants to keep your book? I am sure I don't; I only wish to have done with you as soon as possible."
Gatty.—"If you please, little Mother, you stopped us to talk about those people."
Schillie.—"Those people indeed! You who ought to be more interested in such characters than the other girls, because your Father's name will be handed down to posterity in the same manner. I am quite done up with you being such an owlet, Gatty."
Gatty.—"If you please, little Mother, I don't care about them at all. They are all dead, and they are nothing to me, and I only wish they had not lived, and then we should not have had such a long History of England to read through."
Such speeches were too much for Schillie's fortitude, and Gatty's sparkling eyes showed how successful her manœuvres were in being dismissed at once, "as too stupid to be borne with."
Sometimes I handed over the little girls to her to say their lessons, and they were invariably dismissed before they could have said half of them. And when I enquired the reason thereof, "Poor little victims," she answered, "what is the use of addling their brains with such a cart load of lessons, one more silly than another. As if they could not order a much better dinner than is mentioned in this French phrase book, and all that trumpery poetry; and their geography book is the stupidest I ever saw, as if they did not all know what an island is. It's my opinion they will know too well what an island is, without learning it in a book."
With the boys she got on pretty well, except hurting Felix's feelings now and then by saying, "Now learn your book, and don't eat it this time," which allusion generally caused a tear or two, he having a well very near his eyes.