In the evening, after Mad. de Rosier's departure, Mrs. Harcourt was not quite so happy as she had expected. They who have only seen children in picturesque situations, are not aware how much the duration of this domestic happiness depends upon those who have the care of them. People who, with the greatest abilities and the most anxious affection, are unexperienced in education, should not be surprised or mortified if their first attempts be not attended with success. Mrs. Harcourt thought that she was doing what was very useful in hearing Herbert read; he read with tolerable fluency, but he stopped at the end of almost every sentence to weigh the exact sense of the words. In this habit he had been indulged, or rather encouraged, by his preceptress; but his simple questions, and his desire to have every word precisely explained, were far from amusing to one who was little accustomed to the difficulties and misapprehensions of a young reader. Herbert was reading a passage, which Mad. de Rosier had marked for him, in Xenophon's Cyropaedia. With her explanations, it might have been intelligible to him. Herbert read the account of Cyrus's judgment upon the two boys, who had quarrelled about their great and little coats, much to his mother's satisfaction, because he had understood every word of it, except the word _constituted_. "_Constituted judge_--what does that mean, mamma?" "Made a judge, my dear: go on." "I saw a judge once, mamma, in a great wig--had Cyrus a wig, when he was con--const!--made a judge?" Isabella and Mrs. Harcourt laughed at this question; and they endeavoured to explain the difference between a Persian and an English judge. Herbert with some difficulty separated the ideas, which he had so firmly associated, of a judge and a great wig; and when he had, or thought he had, an abstract notion of a judge, he obeyed his mother's repeated injunctions of "Go on--go on." He went on, after observing that what came next was not marked by Mad. de Rosier for him to read. Cyrus's mother says to him: _"Child, the same things are not accounted just with your grandfather here, and yonder in Persia."_ At this sentence Herbert made a dead stop; and, after pondering for some time, said, "I don't understand what Cyrus's mother meant--what does she mean by _accounted just_?--_Accounted_, Matilda, I thought meant only about casting up sums?" "It has another meaning, my dear," Matilda mildly began. "Oh, for Heaven's sake, spare me!" exclaimed Mrs. Harcourt; "do not let me hear all the meanings of all the words in the English language. Herbert may look for the words that he does not understand, in the dictionary, when he has done reading. Go on, now, pray; for," added she, looking at her watch, "you have been half an hour reading half a page: this would tire the patience of Job."