"I didn't know. We heard you were ill and mother wanted to come to see you. Father wouldn't let her. He thought it might be measles and he is afraid of catching things."
"Yes," replied Godfrey without surprise. "It wasn't measles, but if it had been you might have caught them, so of course he was right to be careful."
"Oh! he wasn't thinking of me or Mummy, he was thinking of himself," blurted out Isobel with the candour of youth.
"Big, strong men don't catch measles," said Godfrey in mild astonishment.
"He says they do, and that they are very dangerous when you are grown up. Why are you alone here, and what are you working at?"
"My father has kept me in as a punishment because I did my sums wrong. The other boys have gone out bird-nesting, but I have to stop here until I get them right. I don't know when that will be," he added with a sigh, "as I hate rule of three and can't do it."
"Rule of three," said Isobel, "I'm quite good at it. You see I like figures. My father says it is the family business instinct. Here, let me try. Move to the other side of that big chair, there's plenty of room for two, and show it to me."
He obeyed with alacrity and soon the brown head and the fair one were bent together over the scrawled sheet. Isobel, who had really a budding talent for mathematics, worked out the sum, or rather the sums, without difficulty and then, with guile acquired under the governess régime, made him copy them and destroyed all traces of her own handiwork.
"Are you as stupid at everything as you are at sums?" she asked when he had finished, rising from the chair and seating herself on the edge of the table.
"What a rude thing to ask! Of course not," he replied indignantly. "I am very good at Latin and history, which I like. But you see father doesn't care much for them. He was a Wrangler, you know."
"A Wrangler! How dreadful. I suppose that is why he argues so much in his sermons. I hate history. It's full of dates and the names of kings who were all bad. I can't make out why people put up with kings," she added reflectively.
"Because they ought to, 'God bless our gracious Queen,' you know."
"Well, God may bless her but I don't see why I should as she never did anything for me, though Father does hope she will make him something one day. I'd like to be a Republican with a President as they have in America."