Robin Linnet

:: :: By E. F. Benson :: ::
:: :: Author of “Dodo,” “Up and Down,” etc. :: ::
LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO. :: :: PATERNOSTER ROW :: ::


DAMON and Pythias, collegiately and colloquially known as Day and Pie, were seated in Damon’s room in the great quadrangle, on two chairs, side by side, with a candle on the table that guttered in the draught, and a copy of “Socrates’s Apology” (in the original Greek) between them. Between them also, propped up against the candle, was a firmly literal translation of what they were reading, to which they both constantly referred. Underneath the candlestick in a far less accessible position, since they desired to consult it much less frequently, was a Greek lexicon. First one of them translated a few lines, with an eye fixed on the English equivalent, and then the other. That was a more sociable way of working than to sit separate and borrow the crib from each other. Besides, there was only one candle, stolen from another fellow’s room, as the electric light had, half an hour ago, got tired and gone to sleep. The books, therefore, had to be centrally situated in this small field of imperfect illumination.
They had got to the point where Socrates, having been warned to prepare for the administration of the cup of hemlock at sundown, had sent for his wife, Xantippe, and his children. But she had made so unphilosophical a howling and feminine outcry that he had sent his family away, and proceeded to spend his last hour in the company of his friends.
Damon paused—he was translating at the moment—and lit a pipe, while Pythias relaxed his attitude of polite attention.
“I vote we stop,” he said. “Socrates was evidently jolly sick of it all and wanted to stop, too. It wouldn’t do to fly in the face of Socrates. Whisky?”
Pythias shut the translation up in the original text.
“I’m not by way of drinking whisky,” he said, “but if you’ve got some ice and soda-water——”