Page:Mrs Molesworth - The Cuckoo Clock.djvu/39

II.] week, and the days he didn't come were as bad as those he did, for he left her a whole row I was going to say, but you couldn't call Mr. Kneebreeches' addition sums "rows," they were far too fat and wide across to be so spoken of!—whole slatefuls of these terrible mountains of figures to climb wearily to the top of. And not to climb once up merely. The terrible thing was Mr. Kneebreeches' favourite method of what he called "proving." I can't explain it—it is far beyond my poor powers—but it had something to do with cutting off the top line, after you had added it all up and had actually done the sum, you understand—cutting off the top line and adding the long rows up again without it, and then joining it on again somewhere else.

"I wouldn't mind so much," said poor Griselda, one day, "if it was any good. But you see, Aunt Grizzel, it isn't. For I'm just as likely to do the proving wrong as the sum itself—more likely, for