I infer that Bill succumbed to this novel treatment at 5.55, and that they fled in haste, when they were quite sure, you know. But I think if they had given him the ham, too, he would have gone off quicker, if that was all they wanted. Over the fireplace is the time table for the babies’ class. It is “approved by me as satisfying the Conscience Clause.” (In those days our control over time tables went no further.) The babies have two lessons a week, each of fifteen minutes, on “threading a needle.” I think the Conscience Clause might come in here. On Friday afternoon they have a lesson on riddles! And I never knew that! “Why does a miller wear a white hat?” “When is a door not a door?” For children who have gone through a year of this course of instruction, including the cow, the camel, and the cat, life has no further terrors, and death comes as a happy release. The cow is nearly exhausted. “And it has a very, very long tongue, and when it wants to get some grass to eat, it wraps its tongue round the grass, and tears it off. Isn’t that clever? Yes, Sally, you shall go home directly, if you are a good girl.” The closure is applied: the lesson ends, and the cow “winds slowly” to its place on the wall. As I go, I mutter to myself the old tag-- “Claudite jam rivos, pueri, sat prata biberunt,”[40] and it reminds me of a familiar Swiss scene. The Matterhorn, the Zmutt glacier, and the Dent Blanche make the background: in the foreground daddy with a spade is diverting the runnels to feed another meadow, and Anastasia, aged seven, is not embittering life in Standard I., but superintends the prolonged meal of a tethered cow, and at the same time “minds” Seraphina and Claudinus, aged three and four respectively, who sprawl contentedly on the Alp, and pull to pieces what I call crocus, and the gods call Colchicum Alpinum. They toil not, nor do they thread needles, but they know a good deal about a cow. Where is Mary? “Oh! Mary, Mary, quite contr_ai_ry, did you tell those babies any mortal thing about the cow that they didn’t know before they came in?” “Well, Mr. Kynnersley, there was that about the tongue.” “Mary, Mary, did you ever hear of the book--” (_I pause, trying to remember the details_)-- “Do you mean the Bible, Mr. Kynnersley?” “No, Mary, nor ‘Bradshaw’: the book that contained things that are true and things that are new: but the things that are true are not new, and the things that are new are not true?” Mary looks at me in utter bewilderment. I box her pretty ears, pull her pretty hair, and dismiss her, quite unrepentant, to her dinner. The teacher of the second class stands where I left her--“Grieving, if aught inanimate e’er grieves.” She thinks I was not pleased with her presentment of the camel. I soothe her, and at that moment appears from the end class-room a bright-eyed little body, with a model, and a pile of literature. “Why, Miss Miranda!” I exclaim, “where have you been all the morning?”