I'm afraid he is a very unwilling scholar.
"You will be glad to hear that Bella Bathgate (I'm taking a liberty with her name I don't dare take in speaking to her) is thawing to me slightly.

It seems that part of the reason for her distaste to me was that she thought I would probably demand a savoury for dinner! If I did ask such a thing--which Heaven forbid!--she would probably send me in a huge pudding dish of macaroni and cheese.

Her cooking is not the best of Bella.
"She and Mawson have become fast friends.

Mawson has asked Bella to call her Winifred, and she calls Miss Bathgate 'Beller.' "Miss Bathgate spends any leisure moments she has in doing long strips of crochet, which eventually become a bedspread, and considers it a waste of time to read anything but the Bible, the _Scotsman_ and the _Missionary Magazine_ (she is very keen on Foreign Missions), but she doesn't object to listening to Mawson's garbled accounts of the books she reads.

I sometimes overhear their conversations as they sit together by the kitchen fire in the long evenings.
"'And,' says Mawson, describing some lurid work of fiction, 'Evangeline was left shut up in the picture-gallery of the 'ouse.' "'D'ye mean to tell me hooses hev picture-galleries ?' says Bella.
"'Course they 'ave--all big 'ouses.' "'Juist like the Campbell Institution--sic a bother it must be to dust!' "'Well,' Mawson goes on, 'Evangeline finds 'er h'eyes attracted--' "Again Bella interrupts.