Nancy | Page 6

asks,
glancing rather longingly at the half-open school-room door, whence
sounds of pious mirth are again beginning to reissue.
"Do you mean really?" ask I, with a highly-dissuasive inflection of
voice. "Please not to-night; we are all higgledy-piggledy--at sixes and
sevens! To tell you the truth, we have been cooking. I wonder you did
not smell it in the drawing-room."
Again he looks amused.
"May not I cook too? I can, though you look disbelieving; there are few
people that can beat me at an Irish stew when I set my mind to it."
A head (Bobby's) appears round the school-room door.

"I say, Nancy, who are you colloquing with out there? I believe you
have got hold of our future benefact--"
An "oh!" of utter discomfiture, and the head is withdrawn.
"I am keeping you," Sir Roger says. "Well, I will say good-night. You
will shake hands, won't you, to show that you bear no malice?"
"That I will," reply I, heartily stretching out my right hand, and giving
his a cordial shake. For was not he at school with father?
CHAPTER III.
Day has followed night. The broiled smell has at length evacuated the
school-room, but a good deal of taffy, spilt in the pouring out, still
adheres to the carpet, making it nice and sticky. The wind is still
running roughly about over the earth, and the yellow crocuses, in the
dark-brown garden-borders, opened to their widest extent, are staring
up at the sun. How can they stare so straight up at him without blinking?
I have been trying to emulate them--trying to stare, too, up at him,
through the pane, as he rides laughing, aloft in the faint far sky; and my
presumptuous eyes have rained down tears in consequence. I am trying
now to read; but a hundred thousand things distract me: the sun shining
warm on my shoulder, as I lean against the window; the divine morning
clamor of the birds; their invitations to come out that will take no nay;
and last, but oh! not, not least, the importunate voices of Barbara and
Tou Tou. Every morning at this hour they have a weary tussle with the
verb "aimer," "to love." It is hard that they should have pitched upon so
tenderhearted a verb for the battle-field of so grim a struggle:
J'aime, I love. Tu aimes, Thou lovest. Il aime, He loves. Nous aimons,
We love. Vous aimez, You love. Ils aiment, They love.
This, with endless variations of ingenious and hideous inaccuracies--
this, interspersed with foolish laughter and bitter tears, is what I have
daily been audience to, for the last two months. The day before
yesterday a great stride was taken; the present tense was pronounced
vanquished, and Barbara and her pupil passed on in triumph to the

imperfect, "j'aimais, I loved, or was loving." To-day, in order to be
quite on the safe side, a return has been made to "j'aime," and it has
been discovered that it has utterly disappeared from our young sister's
memory. "J'aimais, I loved, or was loving," has entirely routed and
dispersed his elder brother, "j'aime, I love." The old strain is, therefore,
desperately resumed:
J'aime, I love. Tu aimes, Thou lovest. Il aime, He loves, etc.
It is making me drowsy. Ten minutes more, and I shall be asleep in the
sun, with my head down-dropped on the window-sill. I get up, and,
putting on my out-door garments, stray out into the sun, leaving
Barbara--her pretty forehead puckered with ineffectual wrath, and Tou
Tou blurred with grimy tears, to their death-struggle with the restive
verb "to love." It is the end of March, and when one can hide round a
corner from the wind, one has a foretaste of summer, in the sun's warm
strength. I gaze lovingly at the rich brown earth, so lately freed from
the frost's grasp, through which the blunt green buds are gently forcing
themselves. I look down the flaming crocus throats--the imperial purple
goblets with powdery gold stamens--and at the modest little pink faces
of the hepaticas. All over our wood there is a faint yet certain purply
shade, forerunner of the summer green, and the loud and sweet-voiced
birds are abroad. O Spring! Spring! with all your searching east winds,
with your late, shriveling frosts, with your occasional untimely sleets
and snows, you are yet as much better than summer as hope is better
than fruition.
J'aime, I love. Tu aimes, Thou lovest. Il aime, He loves.
It runs in my head like some silly refrain. I meet Bobby. I also meet
Vick, my little shivering, smooth, white terrier. They both join me. The
one wriggles herself into the shape of a trembling comma, and,
foolishly chasing herself, rolls over on her back, to demonstrate her joy
at