The danger would be in the waitings and disappointments
that will often occur, even in the height of enjoyable schemes.
It would take too long to tell of all the good-byes. The children
old enough to enter into the parting were setting off too; and Miss
Fosbrook felt more for the little ones than they did for themselves,
as they watched their father and uncle and two sisters into the gig,
and the boys into the cart, with Purday to drive them and the boxes,
Sam sitting on his father's old midshipman's chest, trying, as well
as the jolting would let him, to con over that troublesome Thirty-
fifth Proposition, which nine times repetition to Miss Fosbrook had
failed to put into his head.
Johnnie and Annie wished themselves going to sea, or to London, or
anywhere, rather than having the full force of Miss Fosbrook on their
lessons! She did not make them do more, but she took the opportunity
of making everything be done thoroughly, and, as they thought,
bothered them frightfully about pronouncing their words in reading,
and holding their pens when they wrote. After a little while,
however, they found that really their hands were much less tired, and
their lines much smoother and more slanting, than when they crooked
their fingers close down over the ink.
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