I wasn’t altogether pleased with it myself, but allowed the maid to take it up to the school, with instructions to wait for an answer.
In due time she returned with a missive from Miss Steele.
“My dear Jones,—To-morrow as usual. Yours truly, M. Steele.”
I am sure no model letter-writer ever said as much in as few words.
This little correspondence cleared the air for the time. No reference was made to it when I turned up as usual the next day; but from the way I worked, and the way she taught, it was evident we had both had a shake.
My next relapse was even more serious. It came early in the spring, after our work had proceeded for about nine months.
I really had made good progress all round. Not in Latin only, but in Greek grammar, arithmetic, and English, and was naturally inclined to feel a little cocky of the result.
“Don’t crow, Jones,” she said; “you’ve a lot to do yet.”
But I did not altogether agree with her, and was inclined to indulge myself a little of an evening when I was supposed to be preparing my work. In an evil day I fell across an old book-shop, and found two books, which helped to undo me. One was a rollicking story of a pirate who swept the Western Main, and captured treasure, and seized youths and maidens, and ran blockades, and was finally brought to book in a sportsmanlike manner by a jolly young English middy, amid scenes of terrific slaughter amidships. That was one purchase. The other was even more disturbing. It was a “crib” to the arithmetic I was doing, with all the sums beautifully worked out and the answers given.
So—I must make the confession—I astonished Miss Steele greatly for a while by my extraordinary proficiency in arithmetic, and during the same time spent my evenings in imagination on the high seas, flying aloft the black flag, and shooting across the bows of Her Majesty’s ships wherever I sighted them.