absolutely anything
except the educator.

Leaving the argument to Mrs. Bagley, James sat down angrily with a book.
He was so completely frustrated that he couldn't read, but he sat there
leafing the pages slowly and making a determined show of not lifting his
head.

Mrs. Bagley went on for another hour before she reached the end of her
own patience. She stood up almost rigid with anger. James never knew how
close Mrs. Bagley was to making use of a hairbrush on her daughter's
bottom. But Mrs. Bagley also realized that Martha had to go into this
process willing to cooperate. So, instead of physical punishment, she
issued a dictum:

"You'll go to your room and stay there until you're willing!"

And at that point Martha ceased being stubborn and began playing games.

She permitted herself to be led to the chair, and then went through a
routine of skittishness, turning her head and squirming incessantly,
which made it impossible for James to place the headset properly. This
went on until he stalked away and sat down again. Immediately Martha sat
like a statue. But as soon as James reached for the little screws that
adjusted the electrodes, Martha started to giggle and squirm. He stalked
away and sat through another session between Martha and her mother.

Late in the afternoon James succeeded in getting her to the machine;
Martha uttered a sentence without punctuating it with little giggles, but
it came as elided babytalk.

"Again," he commanded.

"I don't wan' to."

"Again!" he snapped.

Martha began to cry.

That, to James, was the end. But Mrs. Bagley stepped forward with a
commanding wave for James to vacate the premises and took over. James
could not analyze her expression, but it did look as if it held relief.
He left the room to them; a half hour later Mrs. Bagley called him back.

"She's had it," said Mrs. Bagley. "Now you can start, I think."

James looked dubious; but said, "Read this."

"Martha?"

Martha took a deep breath and said, nicely, "'A' is the first
letter of the English Alphabet."

"Good." He pressed the button. "Again? Please?"

Martha recited it nicely.

"Fine," he said. "Now we'll look up 'Is' and go on from there."

"My goodness," said Mrs. Bagley, "this is going to take months."

"Not at all," said James. "It just goes slowly at the start. Most of the
definitions use the same words over and over again. Martha really knows
most of these simple words, we've just got to be dea