Miss Ransome’s education proceeded, despite all her struggles, with inexorable regularity. “Apace” is hardly the word to apply to its progress, since her own resolution to learn as little as possible rescued her from all danger of its course being a rapid one. It was impossible to peruse a contraband novel from across the Channel, or enjoy a ribald little Parisian journal, smuggled to her by a foreign admirer, during the whole time of her incarceration in the schoolroom, as detection must inevitably have followed upon an entire neglect of the imposed tasks. But her intelligence was quick, and she was able to assimilate enough surface knowledge of the subjects in which she would have to undergo an examination by her tormentor without absolute disgrace, and yet have a good margin of time to bestow upon “L’Enigme du Péché” and Le Petit Journal.
A discovery that her reading of her native tongue was on a par with, if not upon an even lower plane of accomplishment than her spelling, led to the imposition of a corvée more hated by its victim, as less able to be shirked or scamped than any of its fellows. In an evil hour, it occurred to Camilla that to make her pupil read aloud the daily newspapers to herself would be the best method by which at once to discover and correct the extent of her ignorance. Through foreign intelligences, leaders, money-markets the unhappy girl ploughed with stumbles and jibs. Once a gleam of possible relief came to her.
“Would you care for me to read you the Racing intelligence?”
“You might as well read me a page of Coptic.”
“I could explain it a little to you, if you cared to hear”—with a delicate bashfulness at this proposal to reverse their respective relations and turn instructor.
Camilla brushed away the proposal as with a new-twigged besom.
“I know nothing in the world that I wish less! Read the review of the new ‘Life of Schopenhauer.’”
But if Miss Ransome was an unsuccessful and unwilling pupil, she was, as Jock soon learnt to his cost, a relentless and successful teacher. He disliked being educated almost as much as she did herself—it would be impossible to do so more—yet that perseverance on her part which, if exerted in another direction, would have made her a profound and eloquent scholar, and his own vanity, of which he had as large a share as most dogs—and that is saying a good deal—combined to enable him to reach a very high standard of unnatural accomplishments.
“If I ever get round her, it will be viâ Jock!” Bonnybell said to herself astutely, seeing the unwilling laughter that wrinkled the mouth of Jock’s mistress, and hearing the latent enjoyment that pierced through the superficial snub of her words.
“What a fool you are making of the dog!”