This little correspondence cleared the air for the time. No reference
was made to it when I turned up as usual the next day; but from the way
I worked, and the way she taught, it was evident we had both had a
shake.
My next relapse was even more serious. It came early in the spring,
after our work had proceeded for about nine months.
I really had made good progress all round. Not in Latin only, but in
Greek grammar, arithmetic, and English, and was naturally inclined to
feel a little cocky of the result.
"Don't crow, Jones," she said; "you've a lot to do yet."
But I did not altogether agree with her, and was inclined to indulge
myself a little of an evening when I was supposed to be preparing my
work. In an evil day I fell across an old book-shop, and found two
books, which helped to undo me. One was a rollicking story of a pirate
who swept the Western Main, and captured treasure, and seized youths and
maidens, and ran blockades, and was finally brought to book in a
sportsmanlike manner by a jolly young English middy, amid scenes of
terrific slaughter amidships. That was one purchase. The other was
even more disturbing. It was a "crib" to the arithmetic I was doing,
with all the sums beautifully worked out and the answers given.
So--I must make the confession--I astonished Miss Steele greatly for a
while by my extraordinary proficiency in arithmetic, and during the same
time spent my evenings in imagination on the high seas, flying aloft the
black flag, and shooting across the bows of Her Majesty's ships wherever
I sighted them.
This career of duplicity could not be expected to last long. One
afternoon Miss Steele brought matters to a crisis by calling upon me to
work a sum on the spot which was not in the book.