Bertie nodded.
“I could talk to that funny old sailor who came here last month; I understood him quite well. I think I must have lived once in France. Do they wear red caps there and blue jerseys, and sing when they take their boats down the river? I feel as if I’d dreamed something like that once.”
“Or seen it, perhaps,” answered the Squire. “I think you know more about France than I do. Well, we must keep up the French as best we can, and see how far the Latin goes. I daresay you can find a grammar amongst the books up-stairs you seem to know so well.”
Bertie darted away, and soon returned with the desired book.
“It’s Tom’s!” he cried, displaying it eagerly; “I always know Tom’s books from Charley’s, because they’re so much more untidy. See, he’s burnt his name on this one with the poker. I wonder if anybody scolded him for spoiling the cover?”
The Squire sat quite still for a few minutes, with his eyes upon the book. His mind was far away in the past. He was unconscious for a short time of all outward impressions. It was so many, many years since he had looked upon or handled any of the possessions of his lost children. An odd thrill ran through him, and yet it was not all pain. Indeed, there seemed something soothing and healing in the sense that he was about to use one of the familiar books that had belonged to the buried past. That battered Latin grammar brought back a host of memories to the mind that for fifteen long years had striven to banish them, and yet these memories brought with them now almost as much of pleasure as of pain.
Bertie did not disturb the Squire’s reverie by one word. He seemed to know by intuition that he was thinking of his dead son; and by and by, in token of his unspoken sympathy, the child bent his head and pressed his soft cheek against the hand that still held the old book.
Then the Squire awoke from his dream, and put his arm about the little boy.
“Now let us see how much you know,” he said, in his usual quiet way; “let us see if you ever learned anything like this before.”