`I called them hares and tortoises,' Clara said -- a little timidly, for she dreaded being laughed at. `And I thought there couldn't be so many hares as tortoises on the Line: so I took an extreme case -- one hare and an infinite number of tortoises.'
`An extreme case, indeed,' her aunt remarked with admirable gravity: `and a most dangerous state of things!'
`And I thought, if I went with a tortoise, there would be only one hare to meet: but if I went with the hare -- you know there were crowds of tortoises!'
`It wasn't a bad idea,' said the elder lady, as they left the cab, at the entrance of Burlington House. `You shall have another chance to-day. We'll have a match in marking pictures.'
Clara brightened up. `I should like to try again, very much,' she said. `I'll take more care this time. How are we to play?'
To this question Mad Mathesis made no reply: she was busy drawing lines down the margins of the catalogue. `See,' she said after a minute, `I've drawn three columns against the names of the pictures in the long room, and I want you to fill them with oughts and crosses -- crosses for good marks and oughts for bad. The first column is for choice of subject, the second for arrangement, the third for colouring. And these are the conditions of the match: You must give three crosses to two or three pictures. You must give two crosses to four or five--'
`Do you mean only two crosses?' said Clara. `Or may I count the three-cross pictures among the two- cross pictures?'
`Of course you may,' said her aunt. `Anyone that has three eyes, may be said to have two eyes, I suppose?'
Clara followed her aunt's dreamy gaze across the crowded gallery, half-dreading to find that there was a three-eyed person in sight.
`And you must give one cross to nine or ten.'
`And which wins the match?' Clara asked, as she carefully entered these conditions on a blank leaf in her catalogue.
`Whichever marks fewest pictures.'
`But suppose we marked the same number?'
`Then whichever uses most marks.'
Clara considered. `I don't think it's much of a match,' she said. `I shall mark nine pictures, and give three crosses to three of them, two crosses to two more, and one cross each to all the rest.'
`Will you, indeed?' said her aunt. `Wait till you've heard all the conditions, my impetuous child. You must give three oughts to one or two pictures, two oughts to three or four, and one ought to eight or nine. I don't want you to be too hard on the R.A.'s.'
Clara quite gasped as she wrote down all these fresh conditions. `It's a great deal worse than Circulating Decimals!' she said. `But I'm determined to win, all the same!'
Her aunt smiled grimly. `We can begin here,' she said, as they paused before a gigantic picture, which the catalogue informed them was the `Portrait of Lieutenant Brown, mounted on his favourite elephant'.
`He looks awfully conceited!' said Clara. `I don't think he was the elephant's favourite Lieutenant. What a hideous picture it is! And it takes up room enough for twenty!'