Now, Mary, call Blanche, and you and Ethel take your arithmetic." So Flora went to read to Margaret, while Blanche went lightly and playfully through her easy lessons, and Mary floundered piteously over the difficulties of Compound Long Division.

Ethel's mind was in too irritated and tumultuous a state for her to derive her usual solace from Cube Root.

Her sum was wrong, and she wanted to work it right, but Miss Winter, who had little liking for the higher branches of arithmetic, said she had spent time enough over it, and summoned her to an examination such as the governess was very fond of and often practised.
Ethel thought it useless, and was teased by it; and though her answers were chiefly correct, they were given in an irritated tone.

It was of this kind:-- What is the date of the invention of paper?
What is the latitude and longitude of Otaheite?
What are the component parts of brass?
Whence is cochineal imported?
When this was over, Ethel had to fetch her mending-basket, and Mary her book of selections; the piece for to-day's lesson was the quarrel of Brutus and Cassius; and Mary's dull droning tone was a trial to her ears; she presently exclaimed, "Oh, Mary, don't murder it!" "Murder what ?" said Mary, opening wide her light blue eyes.
"That use of exaggerated language,--" began Miss Winter.
"I've heard papa say it," said Ethel, only wanting to silence Miss Winter.

In a cooler moment she would not have used the argument.
"All that a gentleman may say, may not be a precedent for a young lady; but you are interrupting Mary." "Only let me show her.