"You started all the others, or it seemed as if you did. Whatever you do they all do, whether you laugh, or miss, or write notes, or ask to leave the room, or drink; and it must be stopped." "Sam Simpson is a copycoat!" stormed Rebecca "I wouldn't have minded standing in the corner alone--that is, not so very much; but I couldn't bear standing with him." "I saw that you couldn't, and that's the reason I told you to take your seat, and left him in the corner. Remember that you are a stranger in the place, and they take more notice of what you do, so you must be careful. Now let's have our conjugations. Give me the verb 'to be,' potential mood, past perfect tense." "I might have been "We might have been Thou mightst have been You might have been He might have been They might have been." "Give me an example, please." "I might have been glad Thou mightst have been glad He, she, or it might have been glad." "'He' or 'she' might have been glad because they are masculine and feminine, but could 'it' have been glad?" asked Miss Dearborn, who was very fond of splitting hairs. "Why not?" asked Rebecca "Because 'it' is neuter gender." "Couldn't we say, 'The kitten might have been glad if it had known it was not going to be drowned'?" "Ye--es," Miss Dearborn answered hesitatingly, never very sure of herself under Rebecca's fire; "but though we often speak of a baby, a chicken, or a kitten as 'it,' they are really masculine or feminine gender, not neuter." Rebecca reflected a long moment and then asked, "Is a hollyhock neuter?" "Oh yes, of course it is, Rebecca" "Well, couldn't we say, 'The hollyhock might have been glad to see the rain, but there was a weak little hollyhock bud growing out of its stalk and it was afraid that that might be hurt by the storm; so the big hollyhock was kind of afraid, instead of being real glad'?" Miss Dearborn looked puzzled as she answered, "Of course, Rebecca, hollyhocks could not be sorry, or glad, or afraid, really." "We can't tell, I s'pose," replied the child; "but _I_ think they are, anyway. Now what shall I say?" "The subjunctive mood, past perfect tense of the verb 'to know.'" "If I had known "If we had known If thou hadst known If you had known If he had known If they had known. "Oh, it is the saddest tense," sighed Rebecca with a little break in her voice; "nothing but IFS, IFS, IFS! And it makes you feel that if they only HAD known, things might have been better!" Miss Dearborn had not thought of it before, but on reflection she believed the subjunctive mood was a "sad" one and "if" rather a sorry "part of speech." "Give me some more examples of the subjunctive, Rebecca, and that will do for this afternoon," she said.