“In a wine-merchant’s shop?  Mr. Rickman wouldn’t hear of it.”

“It isn’t a shop, you know, it’s an office.  You ask him.”

Flossie did not ask him; she knew a trick worth two of that.  But not very long after Mr. Spinks had made his suggestion, finding Keith very snug in his study one evening, reading Anatole France, to his immense delight she whispered into his ear a little shy request that some day, when he wasn’t busy, he would help her a bit with her French.  The lessons were arranged for then and there, at so many kisses an hour, payable by quarterly instalments, if desired.  And for several evenings (sitting very close together, as persons must sit who are looking over the same book) they read, translating turn by turn, the delicious Livre de Mon Ami, until Flossie’s interest was exhausted.

“Come, I’m not going on with any more of that stuff, so you needn’t think it.  I’ve no time to waste, if you have; and I haven’t come across one word in that book yet that’ll be any use to me.”

“What a utilitarian Beaver!” He lay back in his chair laughing at her, as he might have laughed at the fascinating folly of a child.

“I’ll tell you what it is, Mr. Savage; I’ll get another French master, if you don’t look out.  Some one who’ll teach me the way I want to learn.”

“I’ll teach you any way you like, Floss, on any system; if you’ll only explain what you want.  What’s your idea?”

“My idea’s this.  How would it be if you and me were to write French letters to each other?”

“Rather!  The Beaver’s intelligence is going to its head.  That’s the way to learn, Floss; you’ll get over the ground like winking.  But you know—­I shall have to raise my terms.”

“All right.  We’ll see about that.”

He was delighted with her idea.  That Flossie should have an idea at all was something so deliciously new and surprising; and what could be more heartrending than these prodigious intellectual efforts, her evident fear that her limitations constituted a barrier between them?  As if it mattered!  As if he wanted a literary critic for his wife.  And how brutally he had criticized her—­as if it mattered!  Still, in spite of his compunction, the French lessons were not altogether a success.  There was too much disagreement and discussion about terms; for the master became more and more exorbitant in his charges as the days went on, and the pupil still complained that she was learning nothing.  She was thoroughly dissatisfied with his method.  He would break off at the most interesting, the most instructive point, and let loose his imagination in all sorts of ridiculous histories that followed from the idea of her being a Beaver; and when she desired him to tell her such simple things as the French for “Your esteemed favour to hand,” “Cheque enclosed,” “We have forwarded to you to-day as per invoice,” he wanted to know what on earth a beaver had to do with invoices.