He cleared a chair, and stood smiling and looking kindly through his large, round spectacles.
“He treats us like grown-ups,” whispered Robert, “and he doesn’t seem to know how many of us there are.”
“Hush,” said Anthea, “it isn’t manners to whisper. You say, Cyril—go ahead.”
“We’re very sorry to disturb you,” said Cyril politely, “but we did knock three times, and you didn’t say ‘Come in’, or ‘Run away now’, or that you couldn’t be bothered just now, or to come when you weren’t so busy, or any of the things people do say when you knock at doors, so we opened it. We knew you were in because we heard you sneeze while we were waiting.”
“Not at all,” said the gentleman; “do sit down.”
“He has found out there are four of us,” said Robert, as the gentleman cleared three more chairs. He put the things off them carefully on the floor. The first chair had things like bricks that tiny, tiny birds’ feet have walked over when the bricks were soft, only the marks were in regular lines. The second chair had round things on it like very large, fat, long, pale beads. And the last chair had a pile of dusty papers on it.
The children sat down.
“We know you are very, very learned,” said Cyril, “and we have got a charm, and we want you to read the name on it, because it isn’t in Latin or Greek, or Hebrew, or any of the languages we know—”
“A thorough knowledge of even those languages is a very fair foundation on which to build an education,” said the gentleman politely.
“Oh!” said Cyril blushing, “but we only know them to look at, except Latin—and I’m only in Caesar with that.”