Madame Leroi made no reply, but a moment after she said to her daughter, "Marietta, I am thinking next week of beginning to teach you to draw with your elbow."
"What, mamma!" exclaimed Marietta, with a burst of laughter, "To draw with my elbow! And how shall I hold my pencil?"
"With the point of your elbow; nothing is easier."
"Why, mamma, what are you talking about?" continued Marietta, laughing still more vehemently.
"Something, my dear, which I beg you to believe for my sake."
"But, mamma, how am I to believe that?"
"Did you not tell me just now that we can believe what we please?"
"But, mamma, that is quite a different matter."
"For you, perhaps, my child, but as for me I can assure you that when your copy is badly written, it is impossible for me to believe it well done, let me examine it as I will. And when you do not choose to do what you ought, it instantly comes into my head that I must force you to do it by punishment. How am I to manage? I cannot believe otherwise, and I am just as much compelled to obey my judgment, as you are to obey my will. It is no more in my power to bring you up badly than it is in yours to disobey me."
Marietta was accustomed to regard duty as an inevitability, though, for all that, she often failed in it; neither did she think that any reasonable person could escape from it, any more than they could escape from superior force. "At all events, mamma," she said, "you must allow that it is not correct to say that you belong to me."