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Anne chuckled softly. “I suppose you’re right, but that doesn’t mean that I needed an element of spontaneity in my life. I could have kept this a secret from the children.”
Robert laughed out loud. “You are absolutely right, and I apologize. The next time that I come to teach, I shall be sure to leave a full lesson plan for you the night before so that you might be better prepared. Would you prefer it to be written on parchment, or is that not up to your standards?”
Anne crossed her arms in front of her chest and rolled her eyes jokingly. “Now, now, that’s enough of that teasing. If you continue to focus on the quality of paper that you’ll be writing your lesson plan on for too much longer, I do believe that Andre will fall right into the pond.”
Robert’s head whipped around just in time to see Andre teetering on the edge of the water as he tried to reach a duck that was slowly swimming away.
“Andre!” he called sternly, running ahead to get closer to the child, and the young boy immediately drew his hand away and looked bashfully towards Robert. In a few more steps, he was practically standing right in front of the boy, and so he said quietly, “What on earth possessed you to do that? You’re smarter than to lean over the pond like that.”
Andre played with the cuff of his shirt, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Freddie. I ... I just thought the duck was a lot closer than it ended up being. I won’t do it again, I promise.”
Andre finally looked up and met Robert’s eye, and when he could tell that the young boy was serious, he dropped the subject. He gave him a wink, patted him on the shoulder, and then turned so that Margaret and Amelie were also in his eye line.
“All right, everyone!” he cried joyfully, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. “Today’s arithmetic lesson has to do with these ducks here. We will imagine that they have all laid eggs, and each egg will produce a duckling. Now, for Amelie, we’re going to ...”
Robert then launched into his arithmetic lesson tailored to each child. Or, rather, he had tried his best to make sure that it was the correct difficulty depending on each of his nieces’ and nephew’s ages, but he was worried that it would not be. He had only had one day to observe them in the classroom, and while that had given him a pretty good idea of the stage of learning they were at, he hadn’t a clue how well they would do with their arithmetic lesson.
Much to his surprise, it seemed that the child who struggled the most with what he was trying to teach them was Margaret. He had thought that a bright young thing like her would take to the material with ease, but it seemed that she was not as talented with arithmetic as she was with other subjects.
At one point, she became so frustrated with what she was learning that she tossed away her slate, sat down on the grass cross-legged, crossed her arms in front of her, and looked out across the pond with a stony face. Robert looked over and saw that Anne was preoccupied with helping Amelie, and so he decided to hesitantly approach her and see if he could help.
When he came up beside her, his initial instinct was to ask her what was wrong, but he could clearly see from the crossed out equations on her board that she was struggling with multiplying. He breathed a sigh of relief, as he was very skilled when it came to that, and so he decided to instead simply sit down beside the young girl and not say anything for a moment.
Robert got himself comfortably seated and then looked off in the direction that he saw Margaret was looking in. She seemed to be studying the large flock of crows that had taken up residence in a dead tree a little way off.
“Did you know that a group of crows is called …” Robert began saying, but Margaret interrupted him.
“A murder,” she finished. She glared over at him with an expression that greatly resembled her brother. “Everyone knows that, don’t they?”
Robert had to stop himself from laughing out loud. “I don’t believe so. In fact, there are a great many things that I don’t know about the natural world, and that is one of the few facts I do know. I was trying to impress you with my worldly knowledge, but I suppose that I really cannot impress a budding Naturalist with my abysmal knowledge of nature, now can I?”
A small smile started in the corner of Margaret’s mouth, but she did not let it continue on past there. “I’m not a budding naturalist, and I’m sure that you know more about nature than you’re telling me.”
Robert shook his head emphatically. “I cannot tell a lie; I am afraid. I know very little about nature. Here, ask me something that you think is a basic question.”
Margaret squished up her mouth, tapped her finger against the bottom of her cheek, and said, “Hmmm. All right. What is the proper name for a wolf’s baby?”
Robert thought for a moment and then was disappointed when he was able to discover the answer. He had thought that Margaret was going to stump him for sure.
“A pup, I believe,” he said confidently, but when Margaret shook her head, he was baffled.
“They’re called ‘whelps’,” Margaret informed him. “I suppose I should have started with something easier, though, as that is a bit of a trick question.”
“Allow me to try one more, then,” Robert encouraged her. “If I can’t guess it, then I’ll solve your first equation for you.”
Margaret looked very pleased with that. Robert would show her how to do it regardless, but he thought this might be a fun way for her to think that she was getting off easier.
“In that case, maybe I’ll make it a bit harder, then ...” Margaret said mischievously. “What is the difference between deer and elk?”
Robert’s mind went blank. “I ... I’m afraid I thought that those two words were used interchangeably to describe the same animal.”
Margaret’s jaw dropped. “The same ... the same animal? Certainly not! Deer prefer grasslands, whereas elk prefer mountain ... mountain-uss ... land with mountains on it. I can’t believe you didn’t know that.”
Robert shrugged in defeat. “I suppose that I spent far too much of my time with my head buried in arithmetic books to take note of the names of different species. Now, what do you say I solve that first equation for you?”
Margaret nodded emphatically and happily handed over her slate. Robert laid it on his lap and very obviously tilted the board towards her so that she could see everything he was doing. It was an equation that he could have solved in his sleep, truth be told, but he drew out every step so that Margaret could see exactly what he was doing. However, in a stroke of genius, he did everything correctly right up until the last step, when he made an error.
Immediately, Margaret said, “No, no, no, that doesn’t go there! Here, let me show you.”
