Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/28

 "'WELL, TOMMY, MY BOY,' SAID THE TEACHER, 'WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH THE GLOVES?'"

the former teachers show Tom Monro where he was wrong in his solution?"

"They knew he was wrong, because he refused to do it the way it was done in the arithmetic."

"Oh, I think that was entirely to his credit," said the schoolmaster, frankly; "always supposing that his solution is not an arbitrary one and can be explained step by step."

Copford went to his desk and picked up a volume which treated of arithmetic, running the pages past his thumb and examining the book here and there. Without looking up, he said quietly:

"I can't find the grindstone question; where is it?"

"I'll show you," replied the girl, innocently, advancing and taking the book from his hand.

"There it is," she added, pointing out the knotty problem. The schoolmaster looked at it critically. Underneath the question itself, on the same page, was the solving of it in plain figures; the compiler of the book evidently thinking that his grindstone question might perhaps baffle the teachers themselves, which indeed was the case, for most of them clung to that solution as an inebriate man clings to a lamp-post, afraid to move away from it.

The schoolmaster apparently examined the unraveling of the problem with knitted brow.

"Well," he said at last, closing the book, "I will spend a little time with this question privately, and see if there is any other method of solving it. When you entered, Priscilla, I was just examining your copy-book. Here it is, you see, open on my desk, and I have come to the con-