“I think the best thing, Jones, will be for us to assume we know nothing, to begin with, and start at the beginning. We shall easily get over the ground then, and it will be all the better to be sure of our footing. Let us take Exercise 1. in the grammar.”
Miss Steele pouted a little, as if to indicate it was hardly worth her while, as a reader of Cicero, to waste her time over “a high tree,” “a bad boy,” “a beautiful table,” and so on. But I felt sure the exercise would do her good, and was glad Miss Bousfield set her to it.
She irritated me by having it all written down in a twinkling, and going on with Cicero on her own account, while I plodded on up the “high tree” and around the “beautiful table.” I hoped Miss Bousfield would rebuke her for insubordination, but she did not, and I began to think much less of both ladies as the afternoon went on.
It did not add to my satisfaction to get my exercise back with fifteen corrections scored across it in bold red pencil—whereas Miss Steele’s was not even looked at.
I thought of suggesting that it would be only fair that she and I should be treated alike, when Miss Bousfield capped all by saying to her governess—
“Perhaps, Miss Steele, you will go through the exercise with Jones and show him where he has gone wrong. Then he can write it out again for you, and try not to have any mistake this time.”
This was really too much! To be passed on to a girl who was learning Latin herself, and for her to score about my exercises! It was a conspiracy to degrade me in the eyes of myself and my fellow-mortals.
But protest was rendered impossible by Miss Bousfield quitting the room and leaving me to the mercies of her deputy.
“Why,” said Miss Steele, not at all unkindly, but with a touch of raillery in her voice—“why were you such a goose, Jones, as to pretend you knew what you didn’t?”
“I didn’t; I forgot, that’s all,” said I.