"Seventeen and a half."
"You know Latin and Greek as they know them at schools, I suppose?"
"I think I know them pretty well, sir."
"Does your father say so?"
"Why, my father is fastidious; however, he owns that he is satisfied on the whole."
"So am I, then. Mathematics?"
"A little."
"Good."
Here the conversation dropped for some time. I had found and restrapped the knapsack, and we were near the lodge, when Mr. Trevanion said abruptly, "Talk, my young friend, talk; I like to hear you talk,—it refreshes me. Nobody has talked naturally to me these last ten years."
The request was a complete damper to my ingenuous eloquence; I could not have talked naturally now for the life of me.