"
"Do you find the multiplication table there?"
It was so needless to answer! I was mute. I would have come to
the rash conclusion that nature and mathematics had nothing to
do with each other.
"You must learn to command your attention," my governess went
on. "You must not let it wander. That is the first lesson you
have to learn. I shall give you mathematics till you have
learnt it. You can do nothing without attention."
I bent myself to the threes and fours again. But I was soon
weary; my mind escaped; and without turning my eyes off my
book, it swept over the distance between Magnolia and
Melbourne, and sat down by Molly Skelton to help her in
getting her letters. It was done and I was there. I could hear
the hesitating utterances; I could see the dull finger tracing
its way along the lines. And then would come the reading _to_
Molly, and the interested look of waiting attention, and once
in a while the strange softening of the poor hard face. From
there my mind went off to the people around me at Magnolia;
were there some to be taught here perhaps? and could I get at
them? and was there no other way — could it be there was no
other way but by my weak little voice — through which some of
them were ever to learn about my dear Saviour? I had got very
far from mathematics, and my book fell.
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