“Studies” became the fashion among the more intelligent pupils at Bush House; though I have heard that experience justified the old man’s prophecy that they would not be so popular with the parents as the former style had been. “They like lakes, and boats, and mountains, and ruins, and a brighter style of colouring,” he had said, and, as it proved, with truth.
Eleanor was his favourite pupil. Indeed, she was in favour with all the teachers.
A certain quaint little German was our arithmetic-master; a very good one, whose patience was often sorely tried by our stupidity or frivolity. On such occasions he rained epithets on us, which, from his imperfect knowledge of English, were often comical, and roused more amusement than shame. But for Eleanor he never had a harsh word. She was thoroughly fond of arithmetic, and “gave her mind to it,” to use a good old phrase.
“Ah!” the little man would yell at us. “You are so light-headed! Sometimes you do do a sum, and sometimes not; but you do never think. There is not one young lady of this establishment who thinks, but Miss Arkwright alone.”
I remember an incident connected with the arithmetic-master which occurred just after we came, and which roused Eleanor’s intense indignation. It was characteristic, too, of Madame’s ideas of propriety.
The weather was warm, and we were in the habit of dressing for tea. Our toilettes were of the simplest kind. Muslin garibaldis, for coolness, and our “second-best” skirts.
Eleanor, Matilda, and I shared one room. On the first Wednesday evening after our arrival at Bush House we were dressing as usual, when Emma ran in.
“I’m so sorry I forgot to tell you,” said she; “you mustn’t put on your muslin bodies to-night. The arithmetic-master is coming after tea.”
“I don’t understand,” said Eleanor, who was standing on one leg as usual, and who paused in a struggle with a refractory elastic sandal to look up with a puckered brow, and general bewilderment. “What has the arithmetic to do with our dresses?”
Emma’s saucy mouth and snub nose twitched with amusement, as she replied in exact mimicry of Madame’s broken English: “Have you so little of delicacy as to ask, mademoiselle? Should the young ladies of this establishment expose their shoulders in the transparency of muslin to a professor?”