"Her education has been so different from mine," she said, "that it is
scarcely strange if all our tastes are different. But, of course, I shall
do my duty towards her, and I hope and pray that she may make my father
happy."
But Miss Granger did not waste all the summer months in visiting. She was
more in her element at the Court. The model children in the new Arden
poor-schools had rather a hard time of it during Mr. Granger's honeymoon,
and were driven through Kings and Chronicles at a more severe pace than
usual. The hardest and driest facts in geography and grammar were pelted
like summer hail upon their weak young brains, and a sterner demand was
made every day upon their juvenile powers of calculation. This Miss Granger
called giving them a solid foundation; but as the edifice destined to be
erected upon this educational basis was generally of the humblest--a career
of carpentering, or blacksmithing, or housemaiding, or plain-cooking,
for the most part--it is doubtful whether that accurate knowledge of the
objective case or the longitude of the Sandwich Islands which Miss Granger
so resolutely insisted upon, was ever of any great service to the grown-up
scholar.
In these philanthropic labours she had always an ardent assistant in the
person of Mr. Tillott, whose somewhat sandy head and florid complexion used
to appear at the open door of the schoolroom very often when Sophia was
teaching.
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