One forenoon, soon after the end of the Christmas vacation, Robina Underwood was seated at her desk, working deeply at the solution of a quadratic equation; when from the far-off end of the schoolroom arose that peculiar hushed choked giggle, that no one ever ascribed to any cause but some prank of Angela's, more especially on the mornings devoted to her natural enemy, 'the professor of the exact sciences,' as he called himself; who was in fact a stop-gap in the absence of the University man usually employed.
Robina knew that the more concerned she showed herself the more madcap tricks were played, and she disturbed herself little about the commotion, aware that she should only too soon learn the cause, if it were anything out of the common way. So she did. In the quarter of an hour of clearance and recreation before dinner, plenty of information reached her, couched in boarding-school _lingua franca_.
'_Ah! Rouge Gorge, vous ne savez pas ce qu'elle a fait.' 'Une fille delicieuse.' 'Une Alouette superbe, tout a fait Angélique!' 'Et M. le professeur! Comme il etait dans un cire!_' (These phrases being chiefly the original coinage of Angela herself.)
'_Mais qu'est ce que c'est qu'elle a fait?'_ demanded the elder sister, with small sympathy with these ecstasies.
'_'Le plus exquis!_' and with volubility far outrunning composition, and resulting in a wonderful compromise of languages, that a new book had been produced out of which the class had been required to work what was described as '_un somme dans le règle detrois tout à tort et à travers; detestable, horrible, vilain_,' to which a chorus chimed in, '_vilain, vilain vilainissimo_.' The question was, If twelve reapers cut a field in thirty hours, how long would it take sixteen? As a matter of course, all but a few mathematical geniuses at the head of the class had multiplied by 16 and divided by 12, and made the result 40; but Angela, having wit enough to see that this '_n'avait pas le sens commun_,' instead of trying to make out the difficulty, had written at the bottom of her slate, what was hastily transcribed for Robina's edification--
Forty, by the best time-keepers. Reapers? I should call them sleepers, Lazy heapers, idle creepers, And their peepers should be weepers!