_blues_, don't they, eh?'

By this time Good had already begun his lessons with the handsomest
of the three, and so with a sigh I yielded. That day everything
went very well: the young ladies were certainly very clever,
and they only smiled when we blundered. I never saw Good so
attentive to his books before, and even Sir Henry appeared to
tackle Zu-Vendi with a renewed zest. 'Ah,' thought I, 'will
it always be thus?'

Next day we were much more lively, our work was pleasingly interspersed
with questions about our native country, what the ladies were
like there, etc., all of which we answered as best as we could
in Zu-Vendi, and I heard Good assuring his teacher that her loveliness
was to the beauties of Europe as the sun to the moon, to which
she replied with a little toss of the head, that she was a plain
teaching woman and nothing else, and that it was not kind 'to
deceive a poor girl so'. Then we had a little singing that was
really charming, so natural and unaffected. The Zu-Vendi love-songs
are most touching. On the third day we were all quite intimate.
Good narrated some of his previous love affairs to his fair
teacher, and so moved was she that her sighs mingled with his
own. I discoursed with mine, a merry blue-eyed girl, upon Zu-Vendian
art, and never saw that she was waiting for an opportunity to
drop a specimen of the cockroach tribe down my back, whilst in
the corner Sir Henry and his governess appeared, so far as I
could judge, to be going through a lesson framed on the great
educational principles laid down by Wackford Squeers Esq., though
in a very modified or rather spiritualized form. The lady softly
repeated the Zu-Vendi word for 'hand', and he took hers; 'eyes',
and he gazed deep into her brown orbs; 'lips', and -- but just
at that moment _my_ young lady dropped the cockroach down my back
and ran away laughing. Now if there is one thing I loathe more
than another it is cockroaches, and moved quite beyond myself,
and yet laughing at her impudence, I took up the cushion she
had been sitting on and threw it after her. Imagine then my
shame -- my horror, and my distress -- when the door opened,
and, attended by two guards only, in walked _Nyleptha_. The cushion
could not be recalled (it missed the girl and hit one of the
guards on the head), but I instantly and ineffectually tried
to look as though I had not thrown it. Good ceased his sighing,
and began to murder Zu-Vendi at the top of h