"
"The old story!" quoth the gentleman with a grunt. Then, with a
shrewd look at me, he said: "Contra mercator, novem jactantibus
austris."
"Militia est potior," I said, capping his tag from Flaccus' first
satire, without reflecting whereto he was luring me.
"I knew it!" he cried, waving his pipe triumphantly at his wife.
"And you haven't run away from school?"
"Indeed I have not, sir. I left school some months ago."
The lady smiled at his crestfallen look. It was plain that, in
talking over myself and my situation, he had declared with the
positiveness which I found was part of his character, that I had
fallen into some trouble at school and fled the consequences.
There was a brief silence; then he said:
"You spoke of work. What can you do?"
"Little enough, sir," I replied. "But I lived for some years on a
farm, and could do something in that kind."
Husband and wife glanced at each other, and the gentleman said:
"Well, well, go downstairs now; presently I will send for you
again."
I went down, and found my way, by the back of the house, the door
standing open, into the garden. I had not taken more than half a
dozen paces down the middle path when a big dog of the retriever
kind came barking towards me. Stooping down, I patted his head and
tickled his ears, a thing which all animals love, and then went on,
the dog trotting by my side in most friendly wise.
And at a turn of the walk I came without warning upon the girl who
had interposed to save me from a thrashing and had then gone
scornfully away, thinking me a liar.
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