“Oh, dear me! that reminds me,” said the slow-going Cologne. “I hate mathematics. There used to be a problem in the arithmetic about how much water goes over Niagara Falls in a given time——”
“Pooh!” interrupted Tavia, “I can tell you off-hand how much water goes over Niagara Falls to a quart.”
“Oh, Tavia! you can’t,” gasped Cologne, her eyes big with awe.
“That’s easy. Two pints,” chuckled Tavia, and Cologne was for some time studying out the answer!
“If you’d only learned to be ambidextrous in your youth, Tavia,” said Edna Black, smiling. “Then you could write out that Latin with one hand and do sums with the other—and so get over your old ‘conditions’ quicker and come and have some fun.”
“Ha! that’s what Mrs. Pangborn said yesterday,” interposed Cologne, coming out of her brown study. “She said that with just a little practise we should find it just as easy to do anything with one hand as with the other.”
Tavia looked up from her paper again, and giggled. “Wish I’d heard her,” she said.
“Why?”
“I’d asked her how she supposed a boy would ever learn to put his left hand in the right hand pocket of his trousers. Wouldn’t that have stumped even Mrs. Pangborn?”
“And it might have won you another black mark. That fatal sense of humor of yours will get you into deep water yet,” said Cologne, wagging her head.