The only way I could stop her was
to tell her that her face ought to be washed; when I said that to her,
she stopped her sitheing and soon began making herself pretty: and she
was quite gay on the road to my place, where I took them because I
couldn't think of anything else to do with them, though I knew that the
whole family, not counting Rowena, couldn't or wouldn't do enough work
to pay the board of their horse.
3
They hadn't more than got there and eaten a solid meal, than Surajah
asked me for tools so he could work on a patent mouse-trap he was
inventing, and when I came in from work that evening, he was explaining
it to Magnus Thorkelson, who had come over to borrow some sugar from me.
Magnus was pretending to listen, but he was asking his questions of
Rowena, who stood by more than half convinced that Surrager had finally
hit upon his great idea--which was a mouse-trap that would always be
baited, and with two compartments, one to catch the mice, and one to
hold them after they were caught. When they went into the second
compartment, they tripped a little lever which opened the door for a new
captive, and at the same time baited the trap again.
It seemed as if Magnus could not understand what Surajah said, but that
Rowena's speech was quite plain to him. After that, he came over every
evening and Rowena taught him to read in McGuffey's _Second Reader._ I
knew that Magnus had read this through time and again; but he said he
could learn to speak the words better when Rowena taught him.
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