The little boy looked very much as if they were not, and as if meditating an outbreak.
“No, no!” exclaimed Christopher, “let him say Hamlet. Come now, Benny—‘To be or not to be.’”
“It ain’t to be at all,” cried Benny, “and I won’t speak the least bit of it for any of you. I hate that speech!”
“Only see his obstinacy,” said the solemn Joseph. “And is he to be given up to?”
“Speak anything, Benny,” said Mrs. Watkinson, “anything so that it is only a speech.”
All the Watkinson voices now began to clamor violently at the obstinate child—“Speak a speech! speak a speech! speak a speech!” But they had no more effect than the reiterated exhortations with which nurses confuse the poor heads of babies, when they require them to “shake a day-day—shake a day-day!”
Mrs. Morland now interfered, and begged that the sleepy little boy might be excused; on which he screamed out that “he wasn’t sleepy at all, and would not go to bed ever.”
“I never knew any of my children behave so before,” said Mrs. Watkinson. “They are always models of obedience, ma’am. A look is sufficient for them. And I must say that they have in every way profited by the education we are giving them. It is not our way, ma’am, to waste our money in parties and fooleries, and fine furniture and fine clothes, and rich food, and all such abominations. Our first duty is to our children, and to make them learn everything that is taught in the schools. If they go wrong, it will not be for want of education. Hester, my dear, come and talk to Miss Morland in French.”
Hester (unlike her little brother that would not speak a speech) stepped boldly forward, and addressed Caroline Morland with: “Parlez-vous Français, mademoiselle? Comment se va madame votre mère? Aimez-vous la musique? Aimez-vous la danse? Bon jour—bon soir—bon repos. Comprenez-vous?”
To this tirade, uttered with great volubility, Miss Morland made no other reply than, “Oui—je comprens.”