Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/53

Rh. It had never cut well, and the blades had been resharpened so frequently as to have made it economical by now to lave got a new one long ago. This letter was designed to have a sharp edge to it, and began, "My gardener informs me that.…"

Aunt Cathie's attention tended to wander before she got any further than this, and she began, in association with her conversation with Lucia, to draw "touches" on a half-sheet of paper, seeing if she remembered them. The pine-tree touch was easy, and tremendously effective, but she got confused between the elm-tree touch and the oak-tree touch. But after all Lucia had not shown any great interest in the touches; if anything, she seemed a little amused at the idea.

Aunt Cathie left her letter and got up. In the book-case opposite her, on the shelf above the dictionary of the Bible and the published sermons of her father, was a dingy line of school books, with their backs in the condition that would seem to show that they had been much used for the acquiring of knowledge, and it was necessary for the most part to open them in order to find out what they were. The first was a book of physical geography, and it came upon her with the sense of a long-forgotten memory that the Amazon was four thousand miles long, while the Thames (the longest river in the British Isles) was only two hundred and thirty-five miles. Indeed, the physical geography seemed to be written in order to belittle the English nation. Ah—London was the largest town in the world; that was better.

But it was not the physical geography that she was looking for, nor yet the "Shorter History of England," nor the Old Testament Maclear, but she found what she sought at last, a thin book with a brown cover, that reminded her of the French governess who was probably a spy. Definite articles le, la, les, indefinite articles un, une (no plural). "The article agrees with the noun in gender and number." She remembered that, too, now she read it again. Then further on, "The verb agrees with the subject in number and person"; further on again something terribly difficult about the verbs which conjugate not with avoir, but with être—e.g., "Il est parti pour Paris." She had got certainly as far as that, for she remembered it now.

Aunt Cathie sat down again, with a little flush of excitement, and pushed her letter, with its projected acerbity of tone, aside. What fun it would be to work away quietly at French for a week or two, polishing up and recollecting what no doubt would come