When this occurred we, to our regret,
were not permitted to go back to our aboriginal condition of young
barbarians: some restraint, some teaching was still imposed upon us by
our mother, who took, or rather tried to take, this additional burden
on herself. Accordingly, we had to meet with our lesson-books and
spend three or four hours every morning with her, or in the schoolroom
without her, for she was constantly being called away, and when
present a portion of the time was spent in a little talk which was not
concerned with our lessons. For we moved and breathed and had our
being in a strange moral atmosphere, where lawless acts were common
and evil and good were scarcely distinguishable, and all this made her
more anxious about our spiritual than our mental needs.
My two elder brothers did not attend, as they had long discovered that
their only safe plan was to be their own schoolmasters, and it was
even more than she could manage very well to keep the four smaller
ones to their tasks. She sympathized too much with our impatience at
confinement when sun and wind and the cries of wild birds called
insistently to us to come out and be alive and enjoy ourselves in our
own way.
At this stage a successor to Mr. Trigg, a real schoolmaster, was
unexpectedly found for us in the person of Father O'Keefe, an Irish
priest without a cure and with nothing to do.
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