erses with Miss Ford a
great deal. Lady C. is peculiarly civil to Captain G. We scud along,
and are becalmed. 'Having no will of our own, we have no knowledge of
contrary winds,' as Mr. Powys says.--The word is 'eclictic,' I find.
I ventured on it, and it was repeated; and I heard that I had missed
a syllable. Ask C. to look it out--I mean, to tell me they mining on a
little slip of paper in your next. I would buy a pocket-dictionary at
one of the ports, but you are never alone. "Aesthetic," we know. Mr.
Barrett used to be of service for this sort of thing. I admit I am
inferior to Mrs. Bayruffle, who, if men talk difficult words in her
presence, holds her chin above the conversation, and seems to shame
them. I love to learn--I love the humility of learning. And there
is something divine in the idea of a teacher. I listen to Sir T. on
Parliament and parties, and chide myself if my interest flags.
His algebra-puzzles, or Euclid-puzzles in figures--sometimes about
sheep-boys and sheep, and hurdles or geese, oxen or anything--are
delicious: he quite masters the conversation with them. I disagree with
Mrs. Bayruffle when she complains that they are posts in the way of
speech. There is a use in all men; and though she is an acknowledged
tactician materially, she cannot see she has in Sir T. a quality
necessary to intellectual conversation, if she knew how to employ it."

Remarks of this nature read very oddly to Arabella, insomuch that she
would question herself at times, in forced seriousness, whether she
had dreamed that an evil had befallen Brookfield, or whether Adela were
forgetting that it had, in a dream. One day she enclosed a letter from
her father to Mrs. Chump. Adela did not forge a reply; but she had the
audacity to give the words of a message from the woman (in which Mrs.
Chump was supposed to say that she could not write while she was being
tossed about.) "We must carry it on," Adela told her sister, with
horrible bluntness. The message savoured strongly of Mrs. Chump. It
was wickedly clever. Arabella resolved to put it by; but morning after
morning she saw her father's anxiety for the reply mounting to a pitch
of fever. She consulted with Cornelia, who said, "No; never do such a
thing!" and subsequently, with a fainter firmness, repeated the
negative monosyllable. Arabella, in her wretchedness, became endued
with remorseless discernment. "It means that Cornelia would never do it
herself," she thought; and, com