"A pie."
That was the hopeful way in which the examination proceeded, and when
Rachel attempted to say that his mother would be much displeased, he
proceeded to tumble head over heels all round the room, as if he knew
better; which performance broke up the seance, with a resolve on her
part that when she had the books she would not be so beaten. She tried
Francis, but he really did know next to nothing, and whenever he came to
a word above five letters long stopped short, and when told to spell
it, said, "Mamma never made him spell;" also muttering something
depreciating about civilians.
Rachel was a woman of perseverance. She went to the bookseller's, and
obtained a fair amount of books, which she ordered to be sent to Lady
Temple's. But when she came down the next morning, the parcel was
nowhere to be found. There was a grand interrogation, and at last it
turned out to have been safely deposited in an empty dog-kennel in
the back yard. It was very hard on Rachel that Fanny giggled like a
school-girl, and even though ashamed of herself and her sons, could
not find voice to scold them respectably. No wonder, after such
encouragement, that Rachel found her mission no sinecure, and felt at
the end of her morning's work much as if she had been driving pigs to
market, though the repetition was imposing on the boys a sort of sense
of fate and obedience, and there was less active resistance, though
learning it was not, only letting teaching be thrown at them. All the
rest of the day, except those two hours, they ran wild about the house,
garden, and beach--the latter place under the inspection of Coombe,
whom, since the "Jolly Mariner" proposal, Rachel did not in the
least trust; all the less when she heard that Major Keith, whose
soldier-servant he had originally been, thought very highly of him.
A call at Myrtlewood was formidable from the bear-garden sounds, and
delicate as Lady Temple was considered to be, unable to walk or bear
fatigue, she never appeared to be incommoded by the uproar in which she
lived, and had even been seen careering about the nursery, or running
about the garden, in a way that Grace and Rachel thought would tire
a strong woman. As to a tete-a-tete with her, it was never secured by
anything short of Rachel's strong will, for the children were always
with her, and she went to bed, or at any rate to her own room, when they
did, and she was so perfectly able to play and laugh with them that her
cousins scarcely thought her sufficiently depressed, and comparing her
with what their own mother had been after ten months' widowhood, agreed
that after all "she had been very young, and Sir Stephen very old, and
perhaps too much must not be expected of her."