“Why, of course! I knew that all the time,” declared Whitely, folding his paper with the air of one who had had information forced upon him. “I’m ready for him now.”
The recitation took its usual course. Strong flunked his question with a sullen resignation that drew a sharp look from the instructor. Whitely kept in the background until they had got well on toward the sentences which he had especially prepared, when he suddenly developed an intense interest in the recitation, fixed his eyes on Mr. Lovering’s face and brandished his arm aloft. But Mr. Lovering, who was near-sighted,—his colleagues said he always knew what not to see,—looked directly past the waving arm and challenging face to the silent, moody figure behind. Strong received the sentence which Whitely had so carefully prepared; and Whitely, with a face on which chagrin and disgust were so visibly pictured as to stir the merriment of the soberest, dragged himself to the board with a sentence which he had considered beyond the danger line and so not worth while to study.
“Did you have any assistance on that sentence, Strong?” asked Mr. Lovering, peering a little suspiciously over his spectacles. There had been but one mistake in the work, and that a slight one which Strong himself had recognized as soon as his attention was called to it.
“Not in the class, sir,” replied Strong. “I heard it talked over outside.”
“Explain the mood of gereret.”
“Subjunctive in indirect question,” answered the runner, promptly.
“And the case of dies?”
“Accusative, duration of time.”
Mr. Lovering nodded approvingly. “You seem to understand it, at all events. Now, Whitely, we’ll hear yours.”
And Whitely, flushed and confused, blundered through his poor translation, correcting slight errors by gross ones, and sitting down at last in the dismal consciousness that he had committed two of the particular sins of construction which, in Mr. Lovering’s eyes, were most unpardonable.