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48 Gem Trader
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it was some little time before the sound of English stopped grating on my ears.
Nevertheless,
I learned it, and for a peculiar reason. I happened to be sitting in
the room where my mother was talking to a caller. You will remember
that after visiting London on the strength of her knowledge of French,
my mother decided to learn English. Friends of the family warmly
recommended a certain "English miss" as a good teacher, and it was this
Miss Mary Pope who was now being interviewed by my mother, and who,
seeing me sitting with one of my sisters in a corner, immediately leapt
to the conclusion that we were to be her pupils and not our mother.
When she learned her mistake she was oddly disappointed, perhaps
because she liked children, and begged that we should be allowed to
learn too.
Miss
Mary Pope, the "English miss", was a devout Irish Catholic. She was a
plain little person, a lady to her finger-tips, of delicate physique
and uncertain age, who never for a moment unbent, rarely smiled, and
set us all an example of unfailing courtesy which I have never seen
bettered.
She
was an excellent teacher, but unfortunately my mother, full of cares
and responsibilities, never found much time to benefit from her
lessons, and my negligent young sister soon fell out too. But somehow I
felt in my bones that my life was bound up with this strange language
of Miss Mary Pope's and that one day it would prove the Open Sesame to
a new world. Future events justified that premonition. If I had not
learnt English as a lad when learning was easy, I might never have
sought a live-
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