Page 37 of An Unexpected Pleasure

“Waiting to talk to you.”

“Really? Why?” Con dropped down onto the ground beside Theo’s bench, heedless of the effect the grass and dirt would have on his clothes.

“You going down to see Thisbe, too?” Alex asked. Somewhat tidier than his brother, he sat down on the bench beside Theo.

“No. Actually, I was just—well, I wanted to see how you were liking your new tutor.”

The boys’ immediate grins told him how much they liked Miss Henderson.

“She’s bang up to the nines,” Alex responded, and Con nodded his head in agreement.

“Don’t you like her?” Alex went on. “Why do you want to know about her?”

“Yes, I do like her,” Theo replied candidly. “I just wondered…well, how she was as a teacher.”

“She’s ever so much better than all our old tutors,” Con told him.

“Oh, yes. She lets Thisbe teach us.”

“And she lets us have time to go outside and play. She says it burns off energy and makes it easier for us to study.”

“I see. Well, I can see how that would make you like her. But what I wondered…” He paused, trying to think how to phrase his question so that the boys would not grow either suspicious or defensive about their new teacher.

“Whether she’s really a teacher?” Alex prompted.

Theo grimaced at his own stupidity. He might have known that the twins would figure it out as quickly as he. “Yes. That’s exactly what I want to know. Obviously she has made you wonder, as well.”

“She’s much too pretty,” Con gave Theo his own argument.

“And much too nice,” Alex added with a sigh.

“Why would anyone like her want to be a tutor?” Con went on, wrinkling his forehead in genuine perplexity.

“You must have noticed something more, though,” Theo urged.

“Well, she’s too practical. None of our other tutors related anything we learned to life.”

“She called Pliny the Elder boring,” Alex added.

Theo suppressed a grin. “Honest, at any rate.”

“And she doesn’t know Greek,” Con said.

Alex nodded. “She never corrects us when we get a word wrong, and she hasn’t graded any of our exercises.”

“What about Latin?” Theo asked.

“She knows that better,” Con told him.

“She’s good at literature and spelling and grammar,” Alex put in.

“And history. She knows more than we do.” Con frowned and looked at Theo anxiously. “You’re not going to tell Mother, are you?”

“We can do the math just fine,” Alex joined in. “And Thisbe is better at science than any tutor we ever had.”

“And who cares about Latin and Greek, anyway?” Con argued. “I know Papa does. But it’s not as if we are ever going to speak them, is it? We can do those things ourselves, anyway. She’s not at all stuffy, and she lets us spend extra time on the subjects we’re interested in.”

“But she doesn’t let us get away with anything,” Alex assured him. “We don’t just like her because she lets us do what we please. We have been working much better than usual, haven’t we?” He turned to his twin for confirmation.