Katy jabbed him with her elbow. “Stop it,” she hissed. To Arabella she said, “You might want to see what we know already and compare it to what the girls in the seminary know.”
Arabella’s face brightened. “Yes. Of course.”
“I’m not a girl,” Robin growled.
“Certainly,” Arabella said hastily. “It would never occur to me to compare you to a girl. But seeing where you are all at is a good idea.” She looked around searchingly in the kitchen. “Do you have anything we can use as a blackboard?”
Robin shrugged. “Write with chalk on the table?”
“We used to have slates,” Katy looked around as if they were going to appear in the kitchen somewhere. “What happened to them? I’ll go look for them.” Katy left the room.
“Robin broke my slate.” Joy sulked. “Robin always breaks my things.” She looked like she was about to burst into tears.
“I do not!” Robin was outraged. “Besides, I needed them for an experiment. Of aeronautical nature. But it’s a big secret.” He jutted out his lower lip and crossed his arms.
Katy returned, carrying two slates. “There are only two old ones here,” she informed them. “Papa must have forgotten to buy us new ones.”
“What about books?” Arabella thought she’d seen a bookshelf in the parlour.
“Mainly Virgil, Cicero, and Horace.” Katy shrugged. “Which is odd, because Papa hates Latin, and the rest of us don’t have a command of it. Oh and there’s theHistory of England, which is as exciting as mud.”
“I think mud is exciting,” Robin muttered.
“It makes nice squishy sounds,” Joy agreed.
“It also flies well. You can do lots of other things with it.” He looked at Arabella with a speculative gleam in his eyes. Arabella made a mental note to be vigilant the next few hours and check her bed and shoes for mud balls.
“Very good, Latin from the very basics. What about any of the languages? French? Italian? German?”
The three faces stared at her blankly.
“I’d love to learn French. It’s such an elegant language,” Katy said brightly.
Arabella felt encouraged. At last, something that she could offer, even though Robin was pulling a face and muttering how he preferred mathematics and natural sciences. “What about mathematics, Robin?”
“I know how to calculate the speed of a balloon as it rises. It’s easy as pie.” He proceeded to rattle off some numerical combinations.
“Dear me.” Arabella was out of her depth.
The children’s knowledge was disproportionate to say the least. In arithmetic, there was nothing she could offer. Katy calculated with a swiftness that astounded her. She was well beyond the level of mathematics Arabella was capable of. Robin, too, nearly at his sister’s level, solved her problems with a yawn.
“Easy as cherry pie, Miss Weston,” he said. Their father had taught them, so that would explain it.
Their knowledge of history was disproportionate as well. They knew the Napoleonic battles by heart, down to each battalion’s movement on the battlefield, yet only a smattering of Greek and Roman history, and their knowledge of geography could be improved upon as well.
Most importantly, she’d have to teach them manners.
Joy, in the meantime, had lost her interest in the lesson, slid off her chair and sat cross-legged on the floor.
“Mouse, mouse, come out of your house,” she chanted quietly.
Arabella sighed. “What about you, Joy? Don’t you want to join us here?”
Joy ignored her and sprinkled some cheese bits that she’d kept in her pocket on the floor.
Arabella wrinkled her forehead. What would Miss Hilversham have done? Threatened, coaxed, or cajoled? She’d been strict and kind at the same time. No one had dared to disobey her during lessons.
“She’s only just learned her ABCs with Papa,” Katy explained, while Robin proceeded to whittle into the table. “She doesn’t have any schoolbooks, though. Papa is great at inventing stories.”
