"Shut up, and listen," Angelica rejoined from the floor politely; and then
she began to read: 'Histories make men wise; poets witty; mathematics
subtle; natural philosophy, deep, moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able
to contend.' Now that's what I want, papa. I want to know all that, and
have a good time; and I expect I shall have to contend to get it!"
"You'll soon learn how," said Diavolo encouragingly.
Mr. Hamilton-Wells had always enjoyed his children's precocity, and,
provided they amused him, they could make him do anything. So after the
conference he announced that he had been questioning Angelica, and had
found that she really was too far advanced for a governess, and he had
therefore decided that she should share Diavolo's lessons with the tutor.
The governess accordingly disappeared from Hamilton House, the first tutor
found that he had no vocation for teaching, and left also, and another was
procured with great difficulty, and at considerable expense, for the fame
of the Heavenly Twins was wide-spread, and their parents were determined
besides not to let any candidate engage himself under the pleasing
delusion that the task of teaching them would be something of a sinecure.
The tutor they finally secured turned out to be a very good fellow,
fortunately; a gentleman, and with a keen sense of humour which the twins
appreciated, so that they took to him at once, and treated him pretty well
on the whole; but lessons were usually a lively time. Angelica, who
continued to be the taller, stronger, and wickeder of the two, soon proved
herself the cleverer also. Like Evadne, she was consumed by the rage to
know, and insisted upon dragging Diavolo on with her. It was interesting
to see them sitting side by side, the dark head touching the fair one as
they bent together intently over some problem. When Diavolo was not quick
enough, Angelica would rouse him up in the old way by knocking her head,
which was still the harder of the two, against his.
"Angelica, did I see you strike your brother?" Mr. Ellis sternly demanded,
the first time he witnessed this performance.
"I don't know whether you saw me or not, sir, but I certainly did strike
him," Angelica answered irritably.
"Why?"
"To wake him up."
"You see, sir," Diavolo proceeded to explain in his imperturbable drawl;
"Angelica discovered that I was born with a hee-red-it-air-ee
predisposition to be a muff. We mostly are on father's side of the
family--"
"And if he isn't one, it's because I slapped the tendency out of him as
soon as I perceived it," Angelica interrupted. "Get on, Diavolo, I've no
patience with you when you're so slow. You know you don't want to learn
this, and that's why you're snailing."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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