
his head at her, »you see you're not so clever as you thought you were.«
    »O,« said Maggie, pouting, »I daresay I could make it out, if I'd learned
what goes before, as you have.«
    »But that's what you just couldn't, Miss Wisdom,« said Tom. »For it's all
the harder when you know what goes before: for then you've got to say what
definition 3. is and what axiom V. is. But get along with you now: I must go on
with this. Here's the Latin Grammar. See what you can make of that.«
    Maggie found the Latin Grammar quite soothing after her mathematical
mortification; for she delighted in new words, and quickly found that there was
an English Key at the end, which would make her very wise about Latin, at slight
expense. She presently made up her mind to skip the rules in the Syntax - the
examples became so absorbing. These mysterious sentences, snatched from an
unknown context, - like strange horns of beasts, and leaves of unknown plants,
brought from some far-off region, - gave boundless scope to her imagination, and
were all the more fascinating because they were in a peculiar tongue of their
own, which she could learn to interpret. It was really very interesting - the
Latin Grammar that Tom had said no girls could learn: and she was proud because
she found it interesting. The most fragmentary examples were her favourites.
Mors omnibus est communis would have been jejune, only she liked to know the
Latin; but the fortunate gentleman whom every one congratulated because he had a
son »endowed with such a disposition« afforded her a great deal of pleasant
conjecture, and she was quite lost in the »thick grove penetrable by no star,«
when Tom called out,
    »Now, then, Magsie, give us the Grammar!«
    »O, Tom, it's such a pretty book!« she said, as she jumped out of the large
arm-chair to give it him; »it's much prettier than the Dictionary. I could learn
Latin very soon. I don't think it's at all hard.«
    »O, I know what you've been doing,« said Tom; »you've been reading the
English at the end. Any donkey can do that.«
    Tom seized the book and opened it with a determined and business-like air,
as much as to say that
