wait for nothing else all along
says in a deep warning voice:

"Clara!"

My mother starts, colors, and smiles faintly. Mr. Murdstone comes out of
his chair, takes the book, throws it at me, or boxes my ears with it,
and turns me out of the room by the shoulders.

My only pleasure was to go up into a little room at the top of the house
where I had found a number of books that had belonged to my own father,
and I would sit and read Robinson Crusoe, and many tales of travels and
adventures, and I imagined myself to be sometimes one and sometimes
another hero, and went about for days with the centre-piece out of an
old set of boot-trees, pretending to be a captain in the British Royal
Navy.

One morning when I went into the parlor with my books, I found my mother
looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr. Murdstone binding
something round the bottom of a cane--a lithe and limber cane, which he
left off binding when I came in, and poised and switched in the air.

"I tell you, Clara," said Mr. Murdstone, "I have often been flogged
myself."

"To be sure; of course," said Miss Murdstone.

"Certainly, my dear Jane," faltered my mother, meekly. "But--but do you
think it did Edward good?"

"Do you think it did Edward harm, Clara?" asked Mr. Murdstone, gravely.

"That's the point!" said his sister.

To this my mother returned, "Certainly, my dear Jane," and said no more.

I felt afraid that all this had something to do with myself, and sought
Mr. Murdstone's eye as it lighted on mine.

"Now, David," he said--and I saw that cast again, as he said it--"you
must be far more careful to-day than usual." He gave the cane another
poise and another switch; and having finished his preparation of it,
laid it down beside him, with an expressive look, and took up his book.

This was a good freshener to my memory, as a beginning. I felt the words
of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or line by line, but by the
entire page. I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed, if I may so
express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me with a
smoothness there was no checking.

We began badly, and went on worse. I had come in with an idea of doing
better than usual, thinking that I was very well prepared; but it turned
out to be quite a mistake. Book after book was added to the heap of
failures, Miss Murdstone being firmly watchful of us all the time. And
when we came at last to a question about five thousan