be any triangle, when it's only one triangle?" said
another of the men.

"Keep your silly head shut," said the King. "Terence didn't say it was
any triangle; he said let it be. Now will you let that triangle be, or
will I come over there and make you let it be?"

The man said nothing more and Terence went on: "Now, consider this
triangle as two triangles, BAC and CAB."

"How can it be two triangles," another of the men said, "when it's
only one triangle?"

"Will you be still there?" the King said. "Terence doesn't say it's
two triangles; he says you're to consider it. Will you consider that
triangle two triangles, or will I come over there and make you
consider it two triangles?"

"I'll consider it seven triangles, if you like, Your Majesty," the
man answered, "but I dunno what good it'll do me."

"Then consider it," said the King, "and don't talk about it. Go on,
Terence."

"Now, you see that since the sides AB and AC in each triangle are
equal, AB and AC in the first are respectively equal to AC and AB in
the second, and the angles between these sides are equal. So the two
triangles are equal, by previous proposition. And so the angles of one
are equal to the angles of the other, where they are opposite the
equal sides; that is, the angle ABC is equal to the angle ACB, being
opposite the equal sides AC and AB, by the same previous proposition,
and that is what I was to prove."

The King looked at the men with triumph in his eye. "There, you
blackguards," he said, "do you understand it at all, now that Terence
has made it clear to you?"

One by one the men and women began slowly to shake their heads. Not
one of them understood it. "Well, Terence," said the King, shaking his
own head, "I dunno how it is; nobody could be asking you to make it
any clearer than you have, and yet I'm obliged to say there's never a
bit of it I understand myself. Maybe to-morrow night you'll be able to
make us see it clearer."

Terence had come back to where Kathleen was. "Isn't it funny," he
said, "and yet isn't it a pity? I try to teach them as well as I can,
but they never can understand at all."

"And do you mean to say," said Kathleen, "that you haven't got any
farther in geometry than that? Why, that's only the fifth proposition
of the first book."

"Of course I've got farther than that," Terence answered, "but they
haven't, and they never will. I have been trying to teach them that
proposition--oh, I don't know how lon