‘As you know I have put it, for ever and ever!’ cried Marjorie Bartrand, her whole face seeming abruptly transformed into a pair of passionate eyes. ‘Did we not decide long ago, Miss Tighe, that the word mar----, the word I detest so heartily, should never be spoken between us. Allow that I may not be forced, for money, to ground small boys in Latin grammar. Allow that my visions of raising Spanish girls above the level of dolls are as laughable as you all seem to find them. May I not want to bring myself, Marjorie Bartrand, up to the highest improvable point as a human being? Great in mathematics I shall never be.’ ‘I am thankful, indeed, to hear you say so,’ remarked Miss Tighe, with an air of relief. ‘But even the Seigneur is forced to confess I might become--a fourth-rate classic! I know French and Spanish, Dogberry wise, by nature. That must help me a long way on the road to Latin. And I have learnt seventeen irregular Greek verbs--I’m not sure about the aorists--and Mademoiselle le Patourel and I went straight through the Apology of Plato, with Bohn’s crib.’ ‘Poor Sophie le Patourel! You have outgrown her, at last, as you outgrew all your previous dozen or more governesses.’ ‘I don’t know about “outgrown.” Grandpapa ridiculed our attempting Greek, from the first. You know the cruel way we Bartrands have of ridiculing under cover of a compliment! Well, one day last week, Mademoiselle le Patourel was reading the text of Plato aloud, not very flowingly, poor good soul----’ ‘Sophie le Patourel had better have kept to the millinery! Her mother made up a cap like no woman in this island.’ ‘And looking round she saw the Seigneur, outside the window, with a wicked smile about that handsome old mouth of his as he listened. Grandpapa made her the prettiest speech in the world about her quantities, her fine classic tastes, and her pupil. And Mademoiselle le Patourel never gave me another lesson.’ ‘So now your scheme is to prepare for Girton by yourself. Ambitious, on my word!’ ‘My scheme,’ said Marjorie, lowering her voice and glancing over her shoulder to make sure her terrible grandfather, Andros Bartrand, was not within earshot--‘my scheme is to have a real University coach of my own. A Cambridge B.A. at the present time residing in Guernsey.’ Cassandra Tighe started up from her seat. She was a spare, tall, conspicuous spinster, with a face all features, a figure all angles, a manner all energy. Her hair was bleached, as much by exposure to weather as by actual age. Her complexion was that of a frosted apple. Her dress cost her fifteen pounds a year!