I strive to apply the quick rate when you are grumpy." Iris placed her arms akimbo, planted her feet widely apart, and surveyed Jenks with an expression that might almost be termed impudent.
They were great friends, these two, now.

The incipient stage of love-making had been dropped entirely, as ludicrously unsuited to their environment.
When the urgent necessity for continuous labor no longer spurred them to exertion during every moment of daylight, they tackled the box of books and read, not volumes which appealed to them in common, but quaint tomes in the use of which Jenks was tutor and Iris the scholar.
It became a fixed principle with the girl that she was very ignorant, and she insisted that the sailor should teach her.

For instance, among the books he found a treatise on astronomy; it yielded a keen delight to both to identify a constellation and learn all sorts of wonderful things concerning it.

But to work even the simplest problem required a knowledge of algebra, and Iris had never gone beyond decimals.

So the stock of notebooks, instead of recording their experiences, became covered with symbols showing how x plus y equaled x squared minus 3,000,000.
As a variant, Jenks introduced a study of Hindustani.