"Objective, Mr. Hibbs."
"Could it by any remote chance agree with—hm——"
"It agrees with alas, sir."
"Oh! How we do see eye to eye at times! Tutas alas. I could even imagine it meant 'safe wings,' 'uninjured wings,' something like that, if an adverb had not gone flying past my aging benighted head. Now concerning this word agitaret. Did I hear you translate it as 'moved'?"
"I did, sir."
"Had you considered the word 'agitate'?—excellent, I should have thought, and taken direct from the mother Latin."
"I did, sir, but the present-day meaning seemed unsatisfactory."
"Why?"
Reuben discovered he had pulled down his underlip. Mr. Hibbs had striven for three years to break him of the habit, but Reuben, as now, was often unaware he had done it until it was too late. He let it back gently without the usual comforting pop. "To me," Reuben said, "the word 'agitate' suggested fluttering. I might translate: 'Why was it that Daedalus fluttered safe wings?'" He glanced up, honestly feeling as apologetic as a puppy caught in flagrante with a ravished shoe. "To me, sir, Daedalus was no butterfly."
Ben knocked his Ovid on the floor and scrambled after it. Reuben guessed he was trying to divert the lightning, but Mr. Hibbs paid the uproar no heed at all, staring at Reuben with a twitching nose. You could never quite predict Gideon Hibbs: the next moment might be hell, or sudden sunshine, or merely another sneeze.