“Oh, brother!” cried Marianne, “she’s so good-humoured, don’t tease her any more, and don’t draw heads upon her paper, and don’t stretch her india-rubber, and don’t let us dirty any more of her brushes. See! the sides of her tumbler are all manner of colours.”
“Oh, I only mixed red, blue, green and yellow, to show you, Marianne, that all colours mixed together make white. But she is temperate now, and I won’t plague her; she shall chop logic, if she likes it, though she is a woman.”
“But that’s not fair, brother,” said Marianne, “to say ‘woman’ in that way. I’m sure Sophy found out how to tie that difficult knot, which papa showed us yesterday, long before you did, though you are a man.”
“Not long,” said Frederick. “Besides, that was only a conjuring trick.”
“It was very ingenious, though,” said Marianne; “and papa said so. Besides, she understood the ‘Rule of Three,’ which was no conjuring trick, better than you did, though she is a woman; and she can reason, too, mamma says.”
“Very well, let her reason away,” said the provoking wit. “All I have to say is, that she’ll never be able to make a pudding.”
“Why not, pray, brother?” inquired Sophy, looking up again, very gravely.
“Why, you know papa himself, the other day at dinner, said that the woman who talks Greek and Latin as well as I do, is a fool after all; and that she had better have learned something useful; and Mrs. Tattle said, she’d answer for it she did not know how to make a pudding.”
“Well! but I am not talking Greek and Latin, am I?”
“No, but you are drawing, and that’s the same thing.”