jor said I could ride as well
as Con!"

"Reading is what is wanted now, my dear, go on."

Five lines more; but Francis and his mother were whispering together,
and of course Conrade stopped to listen. Rachel saw there was no hope
but in getting him alone, and at his mother's reluctant desire,
he followed her to the dining-room; but there he turned dogged and
indifferent, made a sort of feint of doing what he was told, but whether
she tried him in arithmetic, Latin, or dictation, he made such ludicrous
blunders as to leave her in perplexity whether they arose from ignorance
or impertinence. His spelling was phonetic to the highest degree, and
though he owned to having done sums, he would not, or did not answer the
simplest question in mental arithmetic. "Five apples and eight apples,
come, Conrade, what will they make?"

"A pie."

That was the hopeful way in which the examination proceeded, and when
Rachel attempted to say that his mother would be much displeased, he
proceeded to tumble head over heels all round the room, as if he knew
better; which performance broke up the seance, with a resolve on her
part that when she had the books she would not be so beaten. She tried
Francis, but he really did know next to nothing, and whenever he came to
a word above five letters long stopped short, and when told to spell
it, said, "Mamma never made him spell;" also muttering something
depreciating about civilians.

Rachel was a woman of perseverance. She went to the bookseller's, and
obtained a fair amount of books, which she ordered to be sent to Lady
Temple's. But when she came down the next morning, the parcel was
nowhere to be found. There was a grand interrogation, and at last it
turned out to have been safely deposited in an empty dog-kennel in
the back yard. It was very hard on Rachel that Fanny giggled like a
school-girl, and even though ashamed of herself and her sons, could
not find voice to scold them respectably. No wonder, after such
encouragement, that Rachel found her mission no sinecure, and felt at
the end of her morning's work much as if she had been driving pigs to
market, though the repetition was imposing on the boys a sort of sense
of fate and obedience, and there was less active resistance, though
learning it was not, only letting teaching be thrown at them. All the
rest of the day, except those two hours, they ran wild about the house,
garden, and beach--the latter place under the inspection of Coomb