because there is a scratch in the corner. 'Well, Susan,' says Miss Fosbrook.
Susan jumps up in desperation, and puts her hands behind her. Oh dear! oh dear! all that the gentlemen on a journey were saying to one another has gone clean out of her head!
She cannot recollect the three first words. She only remembers that this is the third time, and another farthing is gone! She stands and stares.
'Susan,' says Miss Fosbrook severely, 'you never tried to learn this.'
Susan gives a little gasp; and Elizabeth, who has said her French without a blunder, puts in an unnecessary and not very sisterly word: 'Susan never will learn her French.'
Susan's honest eyes fill with tears, but she gulps them back. She will not cry away another farthing, but she does feel it very cross in Bessie, and she is universally miserable.
Christabel feels heated, wearied, and provoked, and as if she were fast losing her own temper; and that made her resolve on mercy.
'Susie,' she said with an effort, 'run twice to the great lime-tree and back. Then take the book into my room, read this over three times, and we will try again.'
Susan looked surprised, but she obeyed, came back, and repeated the phrases better than she had ever said French before. She was absolutely surprised and highly pleased, and she finished off her other lessons swimmingly; but oh, she was glad to be rid of them! Yes, they were off her mind, and so she deserved that they should be! She flew away to the nursery, and little Sarah was soon crowing in her arms.
Elizabeth? Not a blunder in French verbs or geography--very tidy copy. French reading good; English equally so, only it ended in a pout, because there was not time for her to go on to see what became of Carthage; and she was a most intolerable time in learning her poetry out of the book of Readings, or rather she much preferred reading the verses in other parts of the book to getting perfect in her lesson, and then being obliged to turn her mind to arithmetic. Miss Fosbrook called her three times; and at last she turned round peevishly at being interrupted in the middle of the 'Friar of Orders Gray,' and repeated her twenty lines of Cowper's 'Winter's Walk' in a doleful whine, though without a blunder.
It was one of the horrible novelties that Miss Fosbrook was bringing in, that she expected people to understand their sums as well as work them. She gave much shorter ones, to be sure, than Mamma, who did sometimes set a long multiplication sum of such a huge size, that it looked as if it were meant to keep the victim out of the way; but who would not prefer casting up any length of figures, to being required to explain the meaning of 'carrying'?
Really, if it had not been for the pig, that shocking question might have led to a mutiny in the school-room. When it was bad enough to do the thing, how could anyone ask what was meant by the operation, and why it was performed?
What did Bessie do when her sum was being overlooked? Miss Fosbrook read on: '4 from 8, 4; 7 from 1--how's this, Bessie? 7 from 10 are- -'
'3, and 1 are 4,' dolorously, as her 3 was changed.
'Now then, what next?'
'Carry one.'
'What did I tell you was meant by carry one?'
'The tens,' said Bessie, not in the least thinking 'the tens' had anything to do with the matter, but only that she had heard something about them, and could thus get rid of the subject.
'Now, Bessie, what tens can you possibly mean? Think a little.'
'I'm sure you said tens once,' said injured innocence.
'That was in an addition sum. See, here it is quite different. I told you.'
Bessie put on a vacant stare. She was not going to attend to what she did not like.
Miss Fosbrook saw the face. She absolutely shrank from provoking another fit of crying, and went quickly through the explanation. She saw that her words might as well have been spoken to the slate. Bessie neither listened nor took them in. Not all her love for her dear Christabel Angela could stir her up to make one effort contrary to her inclinations. The slate was given back to her, she wiped out the sum in a pet, and ran away.
Miss Fosbrook turned round, David, whose lessons had been perfectly repeated an hour ago, was sitting cross- legged in the window, with his slate and pencil, and a basket of bricks, his great delight, which he was placing in rows.
'Miss Fosbrook,' said he, 'isn't this it? Twelve bricks; take away those seven, then--l, 2, 3, 4, 5--the twelve is only 5: the 10 is gone, isn't it? so you must leave one out of the next figure in the upper line of the sum.'
Now Davy had only begun arithmetic on the governess's arrival, but he had learnt numeration and addition in her way. She was so delighted, that she stooped down and kissed him, saying, 'Quite right, my little man.'
Davy rather disapproved of the kiss, and rubbed his brown-holland elbow over his face, as if to clear it off.
'Well,' thought Christabel, as she hurried away for five minutes' peace in her own room before the dinner-bell, 'it is a comfort to have one pupil whose whole endeavour is not to frustrate one's attempts to educate him.'
Poor young thing! that one little bit of sense had quite cheered her up. Otherwise she was not one whit less weary than the children. She had been learning a very tough lesson too--much harder than any of theirs; and she was not at all certain that she had learnt it right.
Now, readers, of all the children, who do you think had used the most conscience at the lessons?
CHAPTER VI.
What an entirely different set of beings were those Stokesley children in lesson-time and out of it! Talk of the change of an old thorn in winter to a May-bush in spring! that was nothing to it!
Poor, listless, stolid, deplorable logs, with bowed backs and crossed ankles, pipy voices and heavy eyes! Who would believe that these were the merry, capering, noisy creatures, full of fun and riot, clattering and screeching, and dancing about with ecstasy at Sam's information that there was a bonfire by the potato-house!
'A bonfire!' said the London governess, thinking of illuminations; 'what can that be for?'
'Oh, it is not FOR anything,' said Susan; 'it is Purday burning weeds. Don't you smell them? How nice they are! I was afraid it was only Farmer Smith burning couch.'
All the noses were elevated to scent from afar a certain smoky odour, usually to be detected in July breezes, and which reminded Miss Fosbrook of a brick-field.
'Potatoes! Potatoes! We'll roast some potatoes, and have them for tea!' bellowed all the voices; so that Miss Fosbrook could hardly find a space for very unwillingly saying,
'But, my dears, I don't know whether I ought to let you play with fire.'
'Oh, we always do,' roared the children; and Susan added,
'We always roast potatoes when there's a bonfire. Mamma always lets us; it is only Purday that is cross.'
'Yes, yes; Mamma lets us.'
'Well, if Sam and Susan say it is right, I trust to them,' said Miss Fosbrook gladly; 'only you must let me come out and see what it is. I am too much of a Londoner to know.'
'Oh yes; and we'll roast you some potatoes.'
So the uproarious population tumbled upstairs, there to be invested with rougher brown-holland garments than those that already concealed the sprigged cottons of the girls; and when the five came down again, they were so much alike in dress, that it was not easy to tell girls from boys. Susan brought little George down with her, and off the party set. Sam and Hal, who had been waiting in the hall, took Miss Fosbrook between them, as if they thought it their duty to do the honours of the bonfire, and conducted her across the garden, through the kitchen-garden, across which lay a long sluggish bar of heavy and very odorous smoke, to a gate in a quickset hedge. Here were some sheds and cart-houses, a fagot pile, various logs of timber, a grindstone, and--that towards which all the eight children rushed with whoops of ecstasy--a heap of smoking rubbish, chiefly dry leaves, and peas and potato haulm, with a large allowance of cabbage stumps--all extremely earthy, and looking as if the smouldering smoke were a wonder from so mere a heap of dirt.
No matter! There were all the children round it, some on their knees, some jumping; and voices were crying on all sides,
'O jolly, jolly!' 'I'll get some potatoes!' 'Oh, you must have some sticks first, and make some ashes.' 'There's no flame--not a bit!' 'Get out of the way, can't you? I'll make a hot place.' 'We'll each have our own oven, and roast our own potatoes!' 'Don't, Sam; you're pushing me into the smoke!'
