VI.

_WHAT ABOUT LESSONS?_


And now, little reader, I know quite well what thought has been popping
in and out of your head all this time. You have been wanting to ask me
what had become of lessons all these weeks, and how a number of little
boys and girls could be allowed to run wild, doing just what they liked
all day long.

[Illustration: BABY, DEAR!]

Well, it does seem very shocking, and there is no denying that, for a
whole month, we did not often see the inside of a book. Yet, I had
learnt to read, and had been in the habit of learning to spell and to
count every day of my life at home. I don't quite know how it came about
that we were not all of us a very untamed set after a month's idleness
at the Park. Perhaps, it was a good thing for us that grandmamma was
what she was. The very perfection of tender kindness we all felt her,
and yet there was a certain dignity about her, that made it a simple
impossibility to be rough or rude before her. And on the whole we were a
great deal with her. When not with her, we were supposed to be picking
up a great deal of French from my cousin's Swiss nurse. And so, in our
way, we did, although I think Susette learned English a great deal
faster than we learned French. Yet, when we wished to coax her, the
French words came fast enough, such as they were.