s just
ha' a set on 'em for good and a'?'

'Why! you'll be after using two or three hundred yoursel' every day
as you live, Sylvie; and yet I must use a great many as you never
think on about t' shop; and t' folks in t' fields want their set,
let alone the high English that parsons and lawyers speak.'

'Well, it's weary work is reading and writing. Cannot you learn me
something else, if we mun do lessons?'

'There's sums--and geography,' said Hepburn, slowly and gravely.

'Geography!' said Sylvia, brightening, and perhaps not pronouncing
the word quite correctly, 'I'd like yo' to learn me geography.
There's a deal o' places I want to hear all about.'

'Well, I'll bring up a book and a map next time. But I can tell you
something now. There's four quarters in the globe.'

'What's that?' asked Sylvia.

'The globe is the earth; the place we live on.'

'Go on. Which quarter is Greenland?'

'Greenland is no quarter. It is only a part of one.'

'Maybe it's a half quarter.'

'No, not so much as that.'

'Half again?'

'No!' he replied, smiling a little.

She thought he was making it into a very small place in order to
tease her; so she pouted a little, and then said,--

'Greenland is all t' geography I want to know. Except, perhaps,
York. I'd like to learn about York, because of t' races, and London,
because King George lives there.'

'But if you learn geography at all, you must learn 'bout all places:
which of them is hot, and which is cold, and how many inhabitants is
in each, and what's the rivers, and which is the principal towns.'

'I'm sure, Sylvie, if Philip will learn thee all that, thou'lt be
such a sight o' knowledge as ne'er a one o' th' Prestons has been
sin' my great-grandfather lost his property. I should be main proud
o' thee; 'twould seem as if we was Prestons o' Slaideburn once
more.'

'I'd do a deal to pleasure yo', mammy; but weary befa' riches and
land, if folks that has 'em is to write "Abednegos" by t' score, and
to get hard words int' their brains, till they work like barm, and
end wi' cracking 'em.'

This seemed to be Sylvia's last protest against learning for the
night, for after this she turned docile, and really took pains to
understand all that Philip could teach her, by means of the not
unskilful, though rude, map which he drew for her with a piece of
charred wood on his aunt's dresser. He had asked his aunt's leave
before beginning what Sylvia called his 'dirty work;' but b