ight as tenpins. After twenty-five minutes of educational experience,
satiety bowled them over.

A single glance had convinced Ben that the alphabet was beneath contempt.
He yawned automatically at regular intervals--long, dismal yawns that
threatened to terminate in a howl, the unchecked, primitive type of yawn
that one hears in the cages of the zoological gardens on a dull day. Miss
Carmichael raised interrogatory eyebrows, but she might as well have
looked reproof at a Bengal tiger.

The class was rapidly promoted to c-a-t, cat; but these dizzy intellectual
heights left them cold and dull. Ben began to clean his revolver, and on
being asked why he did not pay attention to his lessons, answered,
briefly:

"It's all d----d foolishness."

Cacta and Clem were pulling each other's hair. Mary affected not to see
this sisterly exchange of torture. Ned whittled a stick; and, in chorus,
when their teacher told them that d-o-g spelled dog, they shouted
derision, and affirmed that they had no difficulty in compelling the
obedience of Stump even without this particular bit of erudition. Though
Mary had always abhorred corporal punishment, she began to see arguments
in its favor.

With the handleless tub as an elbow-rest the teacher took counsel with
herself. Strategy must be employed with the intellectual conquest of the
Brobdingnags. Summoning all the pedagogical dignity of which she was
capable, she asked:

"Boys, don't you want to know how to read?"

"Noap," responded the head of the class.

"Don't you want to know how to write?"

"Noap."

"But, my dear boy, what would you do if you left here and went out into
the world, where every one knows these things and your ignorance would be
evident at every turn. What would you do?"

"Slug the whole blamed outfit!"

Mary looked at her watch. School had lasted just forty-five minutes. Had
time become petrified?

XIV

Judith Adjusts The Situation

Mary had been a member of the Yellett household for something over a week,
and the intellectual conquest of her Brobdingnag pupils seemed as hopeless
as on that first day. School seemed to be regarded by them as a sort of
neutral territory, admirably adapted for the settlement of long-standing
grudges, the pleasant exchange of practical jokes, peace and war
conferences; also as a mart of trade, where fire-arms, knives, bear and
elk teeth might be swapped with a greater expenditure of time