p? Was I to be taught along with the girls after all? Miss
Bousfield evidently divined my perturbation and hastened to explain.

"Miss Steele, this is Master Jones, who is going to read Latin with us.
Miss Steele is one of my teachers, Jones, and we three are going to
brush up our classics together, you see."

Oh, all right. That wasn't so bad. I had no objection to assist Miss
Steele, or Miss Bousfield, for the matter of that, in brushing-up their
classics, as long as the girls at large were kept out of the way.

I acknowledged Miss Steele's greeting in a patronising way, and then
looked about for a chair. I wished Mr Evans and his lot could see how
far removed I was from the common schoolgirl; here were two females
actually going to pick my brains for their own good. If women must
learn Latin at all, they could hardly do better than secure a public
schoolboy to brush them up.

"Now, let us see," said Miss Bousfield, "how far we have all got. Miss
Steele, you have read some Cicero, I know, already."

Cicero! That girl read Cicero, when I had barely begun Caesar! This
was a crusher for me. How about the brushing-up now?

"And you, Jones, have you begun Cicero yet?"

"Well, no," I said, "not yet."

"Caesar, then; I think we shall both be ready to take that up again.
How far were you--or shall we begin at the beginning?"

"Better begin at the beginning," said I, anxious not to have to confess
that I had not yet got through the first chapter.

But before we had gone many lines, Miss Bousfield, I could see, began to
have her doubts about my syntax; and after a little conference about
syntax, the question of verbs came up, unpleasantly for me; and after
deciding we had a little brushing-up to do there, the conversation
turned on declensions, a subject on which I had very little definite
information to afford to these two females in distress.

I verily believe we should have come to exchanging views on the
indefinite article itself, had not Miss Bousfield taken the bull by the
horns, and said--

"I think the best thing, Jones, will be for us to assume we know
nothing, to begin with, and start at the beginning. We shall easily get
over the ground then, and it will be all the better to be sure of our
footing. Let us take Exercise 1. in the grammar."

Miss Steele pouted a little, as if to indicate it was hardly worth her
while, as a reader of Cicero, to waste her time over "a high tree," "a
bad boy," "