"Not quite yet, but I feel it is going to be. Unless Miss Lothrop can teach me something."
"There are some things that cannot be taught," said Lois.
"And people—hey? But I am not one of those, Miss Lothrop."
He looked at her with such a face of demure innocence, that Lois could not keep her gravity.
"Now Tom is," Lenox went on. "You cannot teach him anything, Miss
Lothrop. It would be lost labour."
"I am not so stupid as you think," said Tom.
"He's not stupid—he's obstinate," Lenox went on, addressing himself to Lois. "He takes a thing in his head. Now that sounds intelligent; but it isn't, or he isn't; for when you try, you can't get it out of his head again. So he took it into his head to come to the Isles of Shoals, and hither he has dragged his mother and his sister, and hither by consequence he has dragged me. Now I ask you, as one who can tell—what have we all come here for?"
Half-quizzically, half-inquisitively, the young man put the question, lounging on the rocks and looking up into Lois's face. Tom grew impatient. But Lois was too humble and simple-minded to fall into the snare laid for her. I think she had a half-discernment of a hidden intent under Mr. Lenox's words; nevertheless in the simple dignity of truth she disregarded it, and did not even blush, either with consciousness or awkwardness. She was a little amused.
"I suppose experience will have to be your teacher, as it is other people's."
"I have heard so; I never saw anybody who had learned much that way."