'
'That is not in the history of England,' said Dolores, as if Mysie had
no business to look beyond.
'Why! of course not, when it happened in America. Papa told us about
it. He read it in some paper, I think. Don't you like learning things
in that way?'
'No. I don't approve of irregular unsystematic knowledge.'
Dolores has heard her mother say something of this kind, and it came
into her head most opportunely as a defence of her father--for she
would not for the world have confessed that he did not talk to her as
Sir Jasper Merrifield seemed to have done to his children. In fact she
rather despised the General for so doing.
'Oh! but it is such fun picking up things out of lesson time!' said
Mysie.
'That is the Edge--,' Dolores was not sure of the word Edgeworthian, so
she went on to 'system. Professor Sefton says he does not approve of
harassing children with cramming them with irregular information at all
sorts of times. Let play be play and lessons be lessons, he says, not
mixed up together, and so Rex and Maude never learnt anything--not a
letter--till they were seven years old.'
'How stupid!' cried Mysie.
'Maude's not stupid!' cried Dolores, 'nor the professor either! She's
my great friend.'
'I didn't say she was stupid,' said Mysie, apologetically, 'only that
it must be very stupid not to be able to read till one was seven.
Could you?'
'Oh, yes. I can't remember when I couldn't read. But Maude used to
play with a little girl who could read and talk French at five years
old, and she died of water upon her brain.
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