The next day lessons began with a vengeance.  It was one thing for the four Delaney children to work with Miss Stevenson at the old Manor House.  Lessons in mother’s time were rather pleasant than otherwise; as often as not they were conducted in the garden, and when the day happened to be very hot, and the little people somewhat impatient of restraint, Miss Stevenson gave them a certain amount of liberty; but lessons at the Rectory were an altogether different matter.  Miss Ramsay, when she awoke the next day, had seemed emphatically to have put on all her armor.  During the holiday, neither Orion nor Diana, neither Apollo nor Iris, thought Miss Ramsay of any special account.  They stared a good deal at Uncle Dolman, and they watched Aunt Jane with anxious eyes, but Miss Ramsay did not matter, one way or the other.  The next day, however, they came to have a totally different opinion with regard to her.

At breakfast, on the following morning, whenever Diana opened her rosebud lips, she was told that she must not speak unless she could do so in the French tongue.  Now, all that Diana could manage to say in French was ‘Oui’ and ‘Non,’ nor was she very certain when to say either of these very simple words.  She hated being silent, for she was a very talkative, cheery little body, except when she was angry.  Accordingly, the meal was a depressing one, and Diana began to yawn and to look wearily out on the sunshiny garden before it was half-finished.  But, of course, there was no play in the garden for any of the children that morning.  Immediately after breakfast they all went up to the schoolroom.  Now, the schoolroom was a very pleasant room, nicely and suitably furnished, but in summer it was hot, and on very sunshiny days it was painfully hot; its single large bay window faced due south, and the sun poured in relentlessly all during the hours of morning school.  Miss Ramsay, seated at the head of the baize-covered table with her spectacles on, looked decidedly formidable, and each of the children gazed at their governess with anxious eyes.  Mary and Lucy were always good little girls, but Philip and Conrad were as idle as boys could possibly be, and did their utmost to evade Miss Ramsay’s endeavors to instill learning into their small heads.  Orion sat between his two little boy cousins, but for some reason or other Orion did not look well that morning.  His little face, not unlike Diana’s in appearance, was bloated, his eyes were heavy, he had scarcely touched his breakfast, and he earnestly, most earnestly longed to get out of the hot schoolroom.

Miss Ramsay, when all the little people were seated round her, knocked sharply on the table with her ruler, and proceeded to make a speech.  “My dear old pupils,” she said, looking at the five little Dolmans as she spoke, “on account of your cousins, who, I fear, are ignorant little children, I mean on this occasion to speak to you in the English tongue.  I have now got nine pupils to instruct, and nine pupils