“Easy enough. One pricks and the other doesn’t.”
“A very superficial reply! To what separate and distinctive duties would you apply the two?”
“Wouldn’t apply them at all if I had my way,” began the pupil daringly, but a flash of his mistress’s eye recalled him promptly to order, and he added hastily, “One you use to darn things up with, and the other to drag strings through tunnel sort of businesses, and bring them out at the other side.”
“No engineering terms, please! Your matter is correct, but the manner leaves much to be desired. Question number two is—Which thread would you use to affix (a) a shirt, (b) a boot, (c) a waistcoat button?”
“The first that came handy,” replied Miles recklessly, whereupon Pam squealed with dismay, and was for labelling all her needles forthwith, but Cynthia rapped sternly on the table, and would have each bobbin brought out in turn, and so carefully examined that its qualities could not easily be forgotten. Then, and only then, would she consent to pass on to the third question, which concerned itself with the vexed question of darning.
“Three, State clearly, and in sequence, the steps necessary for repairing a hole in the sole of your sock.”
Miles shrugged his shoulders with a despairing gesture.
“Oh, if you mean how a woman does it,—drag the old thing tightly over your left arm, so that you have only one hand to work with, fill your needle with a silly stuff that breaks if you look at it, and begin see-sawing away half a mile from the scene of the accident. Stick at it until you have pulled off most of the skin on your fingers, and then turn it round and start the whole thing over again, the other way round. Then walk about and get a blister on your heel!”
The audience sputtered with laughter at this eloquent description, but Cynthia gazed down her nose with an expression of contemptuous disgust.
“And how many blisters would you have if you did not mend it, pray? May I suggest that you make the experiment and see? No marks at all for that answer! Question number four is, Work a buttonhole on the accompanying strip of linen.”