le thing, I shall hate you."

"Oh but, Tom, you won't! I shan't be disagreeable. I shall be very
good to you, and I shall be good to everybody. You won't hate me
really, will you, Tom?"

"Oh, bother, never mind! Come, it's time for me to learn my lessons.
See here what I've got to do," Tom went on, drawing Maggie towards him,
and showing her his theorem, while she pushed her hair behind her ears,
and prepared herself to help him in Euclid.

"It's nonsense!" she said, after a few moments reading, "and very ugly
stuff; nobody need want to make it out."

"Ah, there now, Miss Maggie!" said Tom, drawing the book away and
wagging his head at her; "you see you're not so clever as you thought
you were."

"Oh," said Maggie, pouting, "I dare say I could make it out if I'd
learned what goes before, as you have."

"But that's what you just couldn't, Miss Wisdom," said Tom. "For it's
all the harder when you know what goes before. But get along with you
now; I must go on with this. Here's the Latin Grammar. See what you
can make of that."

Maggie found the Latin Grammar quite soothing, for she delighted in new
words, and quickly found that there was an English Key at the end,
which would make her very wise about Latin at slight expense.

After a short period of silence Tom called out,--

"Now, then, Magsie, give us the Grammar!"

"O Tom, it's such a pretty book!" she said, as she jumped out of the
large armchair to give it him. "I could learn Latin very soon. I
don't think it's at all hard."

"Oh, I know what you've been doing," said Tom; "you've been reading the
English at the end. Any donkey can do that. Here, come and hear if I
can say this. Stand at that end of the table."

[Illustration: "Here, Magsie, come and hear if I can say this."]

Maggie obeyed, and took the open book.

"Where do you begin, Tom?"

"Oh, I begin at '_Appellativa arborum_,' because I say all over again
what I've been learning this week."

Tom sailed along pretty well for three lines, and then he stuck fast.

"There, you needn't laugh at me, Tom, for you didn't remember it at
all, you see."

"Phee-e-e-h! I told you girls couldn't learn Latin."

"Very well, then," said Maggie, pouting. "I can say it as well as you
can. And you don't mind your stops. For you ought to stop twice as
long at a semicolon as you do at a comma, and you make the longest
stops where there ought to be no stops at all."

"Oh, well, don't chatter