Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 1.djvu/15

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VIVIAN GREY.
5

the linen—terms very moderate—100 guineas per annum, for all under six years of age, and few extras, only for fencing, pure milk, and the guitar. Mrs. Metcalfe has both her boys there, and she says their progress is astonishing. Percy Metcalfe, she assures me, was quite as backward as Vivian. Ah! indeed, much backwarder; and so was Dudley Metcalfe, who was taught at home on the new system, by a pictorial alphabet, and who persisted to the last, notwithstanding all the exertions of Miss Barrett, in spelling A-P-E—monkey, merely because over the word, there was a monster munching an apple."

"And quite right in the child, my dear—Pictorial alphabet!—pictorial fool's head!"

"But what do you say to Flummery's, Grey?"

"My dear, do what you like. I never trouble myself, you know, about these matters;"