36. An Improper Fraction
It was in October that Whittaker took his resolution to start a school. He got consent of Mr. Highbury and the other trustees to use the church. With a true Yankee ingenuity, he hinged a writing shelf to the back of each pew, so that it could be dropped down out of the way in church time. He introduced the improved methods of teaching of that day, to the great surprise of those who had never seen anything but the barbarous school discipline of the beech-switch pedagogues. He could teach Latin and algebra, and a schoolmaster who knew these wonderful things was indeed a Solomon. All the country had heard that Whittaker knew nearly all the languages of the earth except the red Indian. This last Mother Tartrum assured people he did not know. She had met him on the street, and asked him point-blank. And he had to confess that he couldn't read and write Indian. So that exception was admitted.
In a country town, no young woman not married, and no man not settled in business for himself, is too great to go to school. Nearly all the grown-up young people availed themselves of the setting up of this school to "finish ' their education, hitherto much broken by the intermittent nature of the old district schools, which taught the three R's only so long as there was school-money to be had. Twonnet was enrolled among Whittaker's scholars, and Janet Bonamy, who had heretofore bten sent to Kentucky co school, now concluded to get a little more knowledge.
Twonnet Lefaure was a sort of leader of the school in good-natured mischief. She was vivacious and witty, in talk and laughter like Tennyson's brook, going en forever, but she could not get her lessons. Whittaker was surprised to find that the Swiss, who in business were the abler and generally the richer people of the town, who, as far as affairs went, were quick and penetrating, were yet slow in taking knowledge from teacher and text-books. It was in school hours that the Americans were superior.
Twonnet tried to study. She even cried over her " sums" in vulgar fractions, but crying did no good. Common denominators and common multiples, multiplications and divisions of compound and complex fractions, swam in her head in a general confusion, and Kirkham's rules about nominative cases governing verbs, and prepositions governing objective cases were quite unintelligible.
" How do you reduce an improper fraction ? " the teacher asked her one afternoon in the arithmetic recitation.
She drew her mouth down, wrinkled her forehead, concentrated her wandering thoughts, and replied, with ahitor-miss desperateness: "Multiply the greatest common denominator of the integer by the least common divisor no multiple of the whole number, and write the remainder for the numerator of the mixed number."
" Twonnet ! " said the master, and he looked at her sternly, while the class laughed. He could hardly bear to rebuke her. There was something so inexpressibly refreshing in her mobile face and quick bright eyes. But there must be no partiality. " Twonnet ! You are not wanting in intelligence. You can learn if you will. If you had spent the time in studying that you spent in spelling on your fingers across the room, you would have been able to answer my question. Go to your scat now, and say this rule after school. I shall expect you to understand it."
Poor Twonnet, of all things, could not help wishing to stand well with Whittaker. She pouted, and went to her Beat. She read over and over a page of Ray's arithmetic about improper fractions, without understanding its abstractions. Janet Bonamy, who sat next to her, surreptitiously gave her all kinds of hints, but Janet's comments did not help the matter at all. When at last the gloaming of the snowy winter's eve began to mellow the light on the white walls of the church, and Whittaker had sent away the school, he found himself alone with Twonnet. He was not prepared for this. He had expected to have other culprits, in whose presence he could scold Twonnet. But there she sat, drawn near to a window for light, looking poutingly at the incomprehensible words about improper fractions and mixed numbers.
Whittaker sat still a moment at his desk after all had gone and the door was closed. He could not quite summon courage to speak to her as justice demanded. In awkward embarrassment he arose from his place, walked to the stove, poked the fire a little, then turned back again to his desk, all the time watching furtively the pouting face of his pupil.
" Twonnet," he said presently, with great gentleness, "you'd better bring your book here. I think I can make you understand."
" I don't understand it, and I can't ! " she said, vehemently, as she threw the book down on his desk.
" I'm sorry," said Whittaker, with kindness, and the tones of his voice made Twonnet cry, in spite of herself. " Sit here by the window."
Whittaker, in an abstract way, had a contempt for peo pie who could not learn easiW, but he could not feel so toward this girl. She had shown herself his superior in other things. And besides, he found her presence here in the snowy evening like a benediction. He went over the explanation two or three times. Somehow he was not in a hurry.
" It's of no use," lamented Twonnet, " I can't understand anything. I haven't any head," and she shook her brown curls about her face and looked out the window.
It was not considered proper for a teacher to praise a pupil in those days. But her evident distress touched the -nan. His voice trembled a little when he said :
" Tou have a superior mind and a very superior heart "
But this set Twonnet a-crying again.
Not knowing what to do Whittaker at last hit upon a plan very much in advance of the methods of that time, He took out of his desk two apples captured from unlucky bovs in school hours. Trimming the one that was bitten down to a half, he put it with the whole one, and Twonnet, amused now at the curious action and quick enough at perception of the concrete, understood at once what a mixed number was. Then he divided the whole apple and the half into quarters and made an improper fraction, telling her to write it on the slate. Then he made her reduce it again to a mixed number, and then he cut it into eighths and made other fractions. But it was getting dark and Whittaker hurriedly closed the church and walked home with Twonnet, whose spirits were entirely restored. He enjoyed her society as one does that of a child.
At the supper-table Twonnet surprised everybody by taking two biscuits at once. She cut off half of one and laid it off her plate. Then addressing the younger children who sat near her, she began :
" This is a mixed number, one and a half, you see." The imitation of Whittaker's hesitant tones and New England accent were so perfect that Isabelle and Adolpbe were set laughing: at once.
" Toinette, que fais-tu ? " said her father, not quite understanding what mischief she was at.
Mr. Whittaker smiled and reddened.
" Je donne une lecon d'arithmetique a mon frere," she answered with simplicity. " Now you, Adolphe, I cut this into quarters six quarters are made. That is an improper fraction because it is more than a whole number."
At this the children and Whittaker all laughed, even Petite Julie joined with them, and the father saw plainly that Twonnet was mimicking Whittaker's manners.
" Tais-toi, Toinette ! " he said.
" Yes, sir," said the incorrigible girl, speaking now to her father but holdino; fast to the minister's tone and manner, "but if these children would only think of something besides play I wouldn't have to cut up my biscuits to get knowledge into their shallow minds."
She closed this with an angular gesture and an inflection peculiar to Whittaker, and so set the table in a roar, while she looked round inquiringly as one who would say, " Why this merriment ? "
" Tais-toi, je te dis ! " cried her father, all the more angry that she had provoked even him to laughter.
Whittaker did not like being laughed at, -- who does ! But in his life of dry application and stern propriety the girl's daring animal spirits were as refreshing as a well in a desert. Nevertheless, he reflected, when alone in his room, that she was of inferior mental ability, for she could not master her lessons easily, and then her laughter about it seemed flippant and frivolous. So unlike Roxy, over whom even yet he could not quite help sighing! But this theory of the flippancy of Twonnet's character was disturbed by what he knew of her at other times, and he fell back upon his old conclusion that there was something nbout the strange girl he could not make out.
He did not know that she had her cry in the garret the next morning when she told the old doll that nobodv would ever, ever love her because she did not know any thing and had no head at all.