J'aime, I love.
Tu aimes, Thou lovest.
Il aime, He loves.
Nous aimons, We love.
Vous aimez, You love.
Ils aiment, They love.

This, with endless variations of ingenious and hideous inaccuracies--
this, interspersed with foolish laughter and bitter tears, is what I
have daily been audience to, for the last two months. The day before
yesterday a great stride was taken; the present tense was pronounced
vanquished, and Barbara and her pupil passed on in triumph to the
imperfect, "j'aimais, I loved, or was loving." To-day, in order to be
quite on the safe side, a return has been made to "j'aime," and it has
been discovered that it has utterly disappeared from our young sister's
memory. "J'aimais, I loved, or was loving," has entirely routed and
dispersed his elder brother, "j'aime, I love." The old strain is,
therefore, desperately resumed:

J'aime, I love.
Tu aimes, Thou lovest.
Il aime, He loves, etc.

It is making me drowsy. Ten minutes more, and I shall be asleep in the
sun, with my head down-dropped on the window-sill. I get up, and,
putting on my out-door garments, stray out into the sun, leaving
Barbara--her pretty forehead puckered with ineffectual wrath, and Tou
Tou blurred with grimy tears, to their death-struggle with the restive
verb "to love." It is the end of March, and when one can hide round a
corner from the wind, one has a foretaste of summer, in the sun's warm