"Here I am, pop!" he exclaimed as he tossed his books upon his couch and threw his cap to the opposite side of the room. "Old Splinter stuck me good this morning, but I can stand it as long as you are here."
"Who is Splinter?"
"Why, don't you know? I thought everybody knew Splinter. He's our professor of Greek and the biggest fraud in the whole faculty."
"What's the trouble with him?" Mr. Phelps spoke quietly but there was something in his voice that betrayed a deeper feeling and one that Will was quick to perceive and that gave him a twinge of uneasiness as well.
"Oh, he's hard as nails. He must have 'ichor' in his veins, not blood. I don't believe he ever was a boy. He must have been like Pallas Athenæ. Wasn't she the lady that sprang full-fledged from the brain of Zeus? Well, I've a notion that Splinter yelled in Greek when he was a baby. That is, if he ever was an infant, and called for his bottle in dactylic hexameter. Oh, I know lots about Greek, pop," laughed Will as his father smiled. "I know the alphabet and a whole lot of things even if Splinter thinks I don't."
"Doesn't he think you know much about your Greek?"
"Well, he doesn't seem to be overburdened with the weight of his opinion of me. He just looks upon me, I'm afraid, as if I was not a bright and shining light. 'Learn Greek or grow up in ignorance,' that's the burden of his song, and I've sometimes thought that about all the fun he has in life is flunking freshmen."
"How about the freshmen?"
"You mean me? Honestly, pop, I haven't done very well in my Greek; but I don't think it's all my fault. I've worked on it as I haven't worked on anything else in college. I've done my part, but Splinter doesn't seem to believe it. What am I going to do about it?"
Will in spite of his light-hearted ways, was seriously troubled and his father was silent for a brief time before he responded to the boy's question.