Timothy Griffin never felt like luck was in his favour. At the age of eight, his parents died in a fire and he went to live with his great-uncle John Griffin, a retired doctor who had no way with children. But just when he managed to become fond of...
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"Can you read what is written here?" Tim pointed to the paper in front of Beatrice. "Look, the letter N and the letter A form na, and the letter..."
"I already know this one." Said the girl with her arms crossed. They had already done half of the homework sheet, but considering how long it had been since they started, she should have done the entire thing, but Beatrice didn't seem to be in much of a rush.
The girl had asked Tim to get her a glass of water twice, in which she drank through a straw so she would not touch her lips in the water and cause scales to appear.
This resulted in another stop, this time for her to go to the bathroom; soon after, she insisted on seeing an insect under the table, but after a few minutes crouched down looking around the dining table, Tim ended up finding nothing.
"Okay, then I bet you can write that word without looking this time." Tim turned the sheet over. Beatrice tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear, hesitating a little as she began.
She wrote a slightly shaky N, followed by an A... and then stopped again.
"Why can't Stephen help me?" she asked.
"I told you, Stephen is helping Anne with her homework right now, and Mrs. Parsons is helping Edmond," he explained. Beatrice sighed. "That is the reason you keep interrupting the lesson all the time, isn't it?"
"It's just that I like it when he teaches me."
Tim sighed. On one hand he understood that, he already expected that Beatrice would prefer Stephen to help her instead of him, they had only known each other for two days and Stephen seemed to be the big brother figure to everyone there.
But at the moment, all he wanted to do was to take that sheet, write down everything else that was left and get all this over with at once.
"But he won't be able to now!" he exclaimed. Beatrice stared at the table with sulky eyes and a tight smile. Tim took a deep breath, realising he had spoken too loudly.
"Look, I think that instead of you taking your time waiting for him to come and help you, why don't we finish everything very fast? It is almost over, if you do everything else without distractions, then you will have a lot more time to play with your dolls, don't you think?"
She shook her head shyly.
"Yes."
"Then let's go, there are only three exercises left."
After saying this, Beatrice began to write much faster, although she only wrote in scrawls. He had given her motivation.
The three remaining exercises rushed by, and in a few minutes, they had already finished everything. After putting her things in her suitcase, Beatrice moved the chair away and jumped to the playroom.
