ngles all get mixed up with the sides, and it is all such a muddle.
I shall never learn Euclid. Is it any use?"

"Is it any use!" cried the tutor scornfully. "Look at me, sir. Has it
been any use to me!"

Dexter looked at the face before him, and then right up the forehead,
and wondered whether learning Euclid had made all the hair come off the
top of his head.

"Well, go on."

"I can't, sir, please," sighed the boy. "I know it's something about
squares, and _ABC_, and _BAC_, and _CAB_, and--but you produce the
lines."

"But you do not produce them, sir," cried Mr Limpney angrily; "nor
anything else! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir!"

"I am," said Dexter innocently. "I'm a dreadfully stupid boy, sir, and
I don't think I've got any brains."

"Are you going through that forty-seventh problem this morning, sir?"

Dexter made a desperate attempt, floundered on a quarter of a minute,
and broke down in half.

"Tut--tut--tut!" ejaculated Mr Limpney. "I'm sure you have not looked
at it since I was here."

"That I have, sir," cried Dexter, in a voice full of eager protest.
"Hours and hours, sir, I walked up and down the garden with it, and then
I took the book up with me into my loft, and made a chalk triangle on
the floor, and kept on saying it over and over, but as fast as I said it
the words slipped out of my head again. I can't help it, sir, I am so
stupid."

"Algebra!" said Mr Limpney, in a tone of angry disgust.

"Am I not to try and say the Euclid, sir?"

"Algebra!" cried Mr Limpney again, and he slapped the table with a thin
book. "Now then, where are these simple equations?"

Dexter drew a half-sheet of foolscap paper from a folio, and rather
shrinkingly placed it before his tutor, who took a pair of spectacles
from his pocket, and placed them over his mild-looking eyes.

"Let me see," he said, referring to a note-book. "The questions I gave
you were: `A spent 2 shillings and 6 pence in oranges, and says that
three of them cost as much under a shilling as nine of them cost over a
shilling. How many did he buy?'"

Mr Limpney coughed, blew his nose loudly, as if it were a post-horn,
and then went on--

"Secondly: `Two coaches start at the same time for York and London, a
distance of 200 miles, travelling one at nine and a half miles an hour,
the other at nine and a quarter miles; where will they meet, and in what
time from starting?'"

He gave his nose a finishing touch with his