“Well, he is rather bumptious.”
“Nothing is worse for a lad of that sort than being cock of the walk. It spoils him often for life.”
“I know exactly the sort of man you mean, always liking to lay down the law and talking to women instead of men, because they don’t argue with him. No, Bobus must not come to that, and he is too young to begin special training. Will you talk to him, Mr. Ogilvie? You know if my horse is not convinced I may bring him to the water, but it will be all in vain.”
They had reached the outside of the window of the dining-room, where the school-boys were learning their lessons for the morrow. Bobus was sitting at the table with a small lamp so shaded as to concentrate the light on him and to afford it to no one else. On the floor was a servant’s flat candlestick, mounted on a pile of books, between one John sprawling at full length preparing his Virgil, the other cross-legged, working a sum with ink from a doll’s tea-cup placed in the candlestick, and all the time there was a wonderful mumbling accompaniment, as there always was between those two.
“I say, what does pulsum come from?”
“What a brute this is of a fraction! Skipjack, what will go in 639 and 852?”
“Pulsum, a pulse—volat, flies. Eh! Three’ll do it. Or common measure it at once.”
“Bother common measure. The threes in—”
“Fama, fame; volat, flies; pulsum, the pulse; cecisse, to have ceased; paternis regnis, in the paternal kingdom. I say wouldn’t that rile Perkins like fun?”
“The threes in seven—two—in eighteen—”