“I’ll find her for you!” I volunteered; and, getting up, I wandered round the tree under whose shade I had been reclining, looking on all sides for Sylvie. In another minute I again noticed some strange thing moving among the grass, and, kneeling down, was immediately confronted with Sylvie’s innocent face, lighted up with a joyful surprise at seeing me, and was accosted, in the sweet voice I knew so well, with what seemed to be the end of a sentence whose beginning I had failed to catch.
“—and I think he ought to have finished them by this time. So I’m going back to him. Will you come too? It’s only just round at the other side of this tree.”
It was but a few steps for me; but it was a great many for Sylvie; and I had to be very careful to walk slowly, in order not to leave the little creature so far behind as to lose sight of her.
To find Bruno’s lessons was easy enough: they appeared to be neatly written out on large smooth ivy-leaves, which were scattered in some confusion over a little patch of ground where the grass had been worn away; but the pale student, who ought by rights to have been bending over them, was nowhere to be seen: we looked in all directions, for some time, in vain; but at last Sylvie’s sharp eyes detected him, swinging on a tendril of ivy, and Sylvie’s stern voice commanded his instant return to terra firma and to the business of Life.
“Pleasure first and business afterwards” seemed to be the motto of these tiny folk, so many hugs and kisses had to be interchanged before anything else could be done.
“Now, Bruno,” Sylvie said reproachfully, “didn’t I tell you you were to go on with your lessons, unless you heard to the contrary?”
“But I did heard to the contrary!” Bruno insisted, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
“What did you hear, you wicked boy?”
“It were a sort of noise in the air,” said Bruno: “a sort of a scrambling noise. Didn’t oo hear it, Mister Sir?”
“Well, anyhow, you needn’t go to sleep over them, you lazy-lazy!” For Bruno had curled himself up, on the largest “lesson,” and was arranging another as a pillow.
“I wasn’t asleep!” said Bruno, in a deeply-injured tone. “When I shuts mine eyes, it’s to show that I’m awake!”
“Well, how much have you learned, then?”
“I’ve learned a little tiny bit,” said Bruno, modestly, being evidently afraid of overstating his achievement. “can’t learn no more!”
“Oh Bruno! You know you can, if you like.”
“Course I can, if I like,” the pale student replied; “but I can’t if I don’t like!”
Sylvie had a way—which I could not too highly admire—of evading Bruno’s logical perplexities by suddenly striking into a new line of thought; and this masterly stratagem she now adopted.
“Well, I must say one thing—”
“Did oo know, Mister Sir,” Bruno thoughtfully remarked, “that Sylvie can’t count? Whenever she says ‘I must say one thing,’ I know quite well she’ll say two things! And she always doos.”
“Two heads are better than one, Bruno,” I said, but with no very distinct idea as to what I meant by it.
“I shouldn’t mind having two heads,” Bruno said softly to himself: “one head to eat mine dinner, and one head to argue wiz Sylvie—doos oo think oo’d look prettier if oo’d got two heads, Mister Sir?”
The case did not, I assured him, admit of a doubt.
“The reason why Sylvie’s so cross—” Bruno went on very seriously, almost sadly.
Sylvie’s eyes grew large and round with surprise at this new line of enquiry—her rosy face being perfectly radiant with good humour. But she said nothing.
“Wouldn’t it be better to tell me after the lessons are over?” I suggested.
“Very well,” Bruno said with a resigned air: “only she won’t be cross then.”
“There’s only three lessons to do,” said Sylvie. “Spelling, and Geography, and Singing.”
“Not Arithmetic?” I said.
“No, he hasn’t a head for Arithmetic—”
“Course I haven’t!” said Bruno. “Mine head’s for hair. I haven’t got a lot of heads!”
“—and he can’t learn his Multiplication-table—”
“I like History ever so much better,” Bruno remarked. “Oo has to repeat that Muddlecome table—”
“Well, and you have to repeat—”
“No, oo hasn’t!” Bruno interrupted. “History repeats itself. The Professor said so!”
Sylvie was arranging some letters on a board—E-V-I-L. “Now, Bruno,” she said, “what does that spell?”
Bruno looked at it, in solemn silence, for a minute. “I knows what it doosn’t spell!” he said at last.
“That’s no good,” said Sylvie. “What does it spell?”
Bruno took another look at the mysterious letters. “Why, it’s ‘live,’ backwards!” he exclaimed. (I thought it was, indeed.)
“How did you manage to see that?” said Sylvie.
“I just twiddled my eyes,” said Bruno, “and then I saw it directly. Now may I sing the Kingfisher Song?”
“Geography next,” said Sylvie. “Don’t you know the Rules?”
“I thinks there oughtn’t to be such a lot of Rules, Sylvie! I thinks—”
“Yes, there ought to be such a lot of Rules, you wicked, wicked boy! And how dare you think at all about it? And shut up that mouth directly!”
So, as “that mouth” didn’t seem inclined to shut up of itself, Sylvie shut it for him—with both hands—and sealed it with a kiss, just as you would fasten up a letter.
“Now that Bruno is fastened up from talking,” she went on, turning to me, “I’ll show you the Map he does his lessons on.”
And there it was, a large Map of the World, spread out on the ground. It was so large that Bruno had to crawl about on it, to point out the places named in the “Kingfisher Lesson.”
“When a Kingfisher sees a Ladybird flying away, he says ‘Ceylon, if you Candia!’ And when he catches it, he says ‘Come to Media! And if you’re Hungary or thirsty, I’ll give you some Nubia!’
