was not writing or drawing, he was thinking about drawing or
writing; when they got to Marsfield, he hardly ever stirred outside
the grounds.

There he would garden with gardeners or cut down trees, or do
carpenter's work at his short intervals of rest, or groom a horse.

How often have I seen him suddenly drop a spade or axe or saw or
curry-comb, and go straight off to a thatched gazebo he had built
himself, where writing materials were left, and write down the happy
thought that had occurred; and then, pipe in mouth, back to his
gardening or the rest!

I also had a gazebo close to his, where I read blue-books and wrote
my endless correspondence with the help of a secretary--only too
glad, both of us, to be disturbed by festive and frolicsome young
Bartys of either sex--by their dogs--by their mother!

Leah's province it was to attend to all the machinery by which life
was carried on in this big house, and social intercourse, and the
education of the young, and endless hospitalities.

She would even try to coach her boys in Latin and Euclid during
their preparation times for the school where they spent the day, two
miles off. Such Latin! such geometry! She could never master the
ablative absolute, nor what used to be called at Brossard's _le que
retranche_, nor see the necessity of demonstrating by A + B what was
sufficiently obvious to her without.

"Who helps you in your Latin, my boy?" says the master, with a grin.

"My father," says Geoffrey, too loyal to admit it was his mother who
had coached him wrong.

"Ah, I suppose he helps you with your Euclid also?" says the master,
with a broader grin still.

"Yes, sir," says Geoffrey.

"Your father's French, I suppose?"

"I dare say, sir," says Geoffrey.

"Ah, I thought so!"

All of which was very unfair to Barty, whose Latin, like that of
most boys who have been brought up at a French school, was probably
quite as good as the English school-master's own, except for its
innocence of quantities; and Blanchet and Legendre are easier to
learn than Euclid, and stick longer in the memory; and Barty
remembered well.

Then, besides the many friends who came to the pleasant house to
stay, or else for lunch or tea or dinner, there were pious pilgrims
from all parts of the world, as to a shrine--from Paris, from
Germany, Italy, Norway, and Sweden; from America especially. Leah
had to play the hostess almost every day of her life, and show off
her lion and make h