“I want my dinner!”
“What is that, Lewie?” said Mr. Malcolm, looking up quietly from his book.
“I want my dinner, I tell you!” roared Lewie.
Pushing his book towards him, Mr. Malcolm said, in a quiet, determined manner:
“You know the conditions, Lewie, on which you leave this room: they will not change, if we remain here together till to-morrow morning. This lesson must be learned and recited perfectly, before you taste any food.”
Lewie murmured that “there was one good thing—his teacher would have to fast too.”
“As for me, I never take but two meals a day,” said Mr. Malcolm; “I can wait till five o’clock very well for my dinner; and should I be very hungry, your mother will doubtless give me something to eat.”
Through most of the afternoon, Lewie sat scrawling figures with his pencil on some paper which was lying near, and really beginning to suffer from the “keen demands of appetite.” After sitting thus an hour or two, he suddenly said:
“Give me the book, then, if there is no other way! I can learn that lesson in five minutes, if I have a mind.”
“I know that, Lewie,” said his tutor; “no one can learn quicker or better than you, when you choose; but you cannot have this book till you ask me for it in a different way.”