"Please show these ladies how to go into a corner," he concludes, and your teacher does so, executing the movement so marvelously that it seems as if he would have no difficulty in performing it in any passageway through which his horse could walk in a straight line. The whole class gazes enviously, to be brought to the proper frame of mind by a sharp expostulatory fire of: "Keep your distance! Forward!" with about four times as many warnings addressed to the society young lady as to all the others; and then suddenly, unexpectedly, the clock strikes and the lesson is over.
The society young lady dresses herself with much precision and deliberation, and announces that she will never, no, never! never so long as she lives, come again; and in spite of Nell's attempts to quiet her, she repeats the statement in the reception room, in the master's hearing, aiming it straight at his quiet countenance.
"No?" he says, not so much disturbed as she could desire. "You should not despair, you will learn in time."
"I don't despair," she answers; "but I know something, and I will not be treated as if I knew nothing."
"An, you know something," he repeats, in an interested way. "But what you do not know, my young lady, is how little that something is! This is a school; you came here to be taught. I will not cheat you by not teaching you."
"And it is no way to teach! Three men ordering a class at once!"
"Ah, it is 'no way to teach'! Now, it is I who am taking a lesson from you. I am greatly obliged, but I must keep to my own old way. It may be wrong —for you, my young lady—but it has made soldiers to ride, and little girls, and other young ladies, and I am content. And these others? Are they not coming any more?"
And every one of those cowardly girls huddles away behind you, Esmeralda, and leaves you to stammer, "Y-yes, sir, but you do s-scold a little hard."
"That," says the master, "is my bog voice to make the horses mind, and to make sure that you hear it. And I told you the other day that I spoke for your good, not for my own. If I should say every time I want trotting, 'My dear and much respected beautiful young ladies, please to trot,' how much would you learn in a morning?"
"We are ladies," says the society young lady, "and we should be treated as ladies."