"It's all your fault!" said Myra, angrily, to the Memory-Saver, when she got home. "You must learn all the lessons for me, and then I'm going to slap you, do you hear? You horrid little thing!"
"HER BROTHER WAS MAKING A 'RIDICULOUS FUSS.'"
The Memory-Saver heard well enough, and understood too. Myra was in a very bad temper. Her brother had discovered that his death's-head moth was missing, and was making what Myra called a "ridiculous fuss" about it. He had not asked her if she knew where it was, but she felt very uncomfortable all the same. She did not think he would have minded so much. Being uncomfortable, she was cross; and as she dared not be cross with Miss Prisms, she was cross with the Memory-Saver, and fulfilled her promise of slapping him when he had done the double lessons for her. She was too absorbed in her own trouble to notice that his box was half off the wardrobe top when she put him—not over-gently—into it; and the bump with which she landed on the floor as she got down from the chair on which she had been standing quite drowned the bump the box made, as it fell behind the wardrobe. The poor little Memory-Saver fell out with a crash, and lay half stunned, feebly waving his little tags. No one came to pick him up, so he lay there all through the long, dark night. He was cracked all over, and something very peculiar had happened to his interior. In fact, though he did not know it, all the partitions had at last given way, and the French, history, spelling, geography, and tables had run into one another, and were now all mixed in one great pulpy mass inside him. No wonder he felt uncomfortable!
When Myra came for him in the morning she found out what had happened. She fished him out from behind the wardrobe with a good deal of difficulty, and looked at him in consternation. He was sticky all over with the tears he had shed, was very soft and limp, and, worst of all, was leaking the Wars of the Roses and the chief towns of France from more than one crack. However, Myra was late as it was; she had no time to examine him carefully. She put him in her pocket, and ran off to school. She put her hand in her pocket to feel if he were safe as soon as she got to her seat. He felt softer and stickier than ever. Would he be able to say the lessons? Myra felt doubtful, but as she did not remember a word of them herself, she was obliged to trust to him. Trembling she pulled the "Poetry" string, when Miss Prisms called on her for her lesson. The Memory-Saver gasped and began; each word hurt him very much to bring out, but as they came he began to feel strange and light, happier than he had ever felt before. This is what he said: "A chieftain to the Highlands bound—cries—the feminine of adjectives is formed by adding eleven times nine are Rouen, former capital of Normandy, and heir presumptive to the throne by his descent from the son of Edward III., eleven times twelve are le père, the father, la mère, the mother—Oh, I'm the chief of Ulva's isle, and this, Paris on the Seine...."
"Myra, stop at once!" cried Miss Prisms, angrily; but Myra, or, rather, the Memory-Saver, could not stop. His internal partitions were gone, and whichever string was pulled, he was obliged to let out all that was inside him. So for ten dreadful minutes he went on, pouring out French, geography, history, and tables in one terrible mixture, while Myra wished she could sink through the floor, the girls tittered, and Miss Prisms' anger changed to anxiety. She began to fan Myra with an exercise-book, begged her to be quiet, and assured her she would be "better directly." At last, however, the Memory-Saver came to an end; he would have been much longer, but a great deal had leaked out of him in the night.
"THE GIRLS TITTERED."
"Twelve twelves are a hundred and forty-four—Bayonne, at the mouth of the Adour, mounted the throne as Henry VII.," he concluded.
Myra burst out crying. Miss Prisms made her take sal-volatile and lie on the sofa in her sitting-room. As soon as school was over, she took Myra home herself, and told her mother the little girl must be going to have brain-fever. The doctor was called in and shook his head, looking very wise, although he could find nothing at all the matter with Myra. "It is a curious case," he said; "let her stay away from school for a week, and send for me if another attack comes on."