Strangeways hesitated again.
“No, I think we're not,” he answered politely.
“I've made a break,” thought Tembarom. “I ought to have kept my mouth shut. I must try to switch him back.”
Strangeways was looking down at the back of the book he held in his hand.
“This one was the Latin poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 B. C. You know him,” he said.
“Oh, that one!” exclaimed Tembarom, as if with an air of immense relief. “What a fool I was to forget! I'm glad it's him. Will you go on reading and let me hear some more? He's a winner from Winnersville—that Horace is.”
Perhaps it was a sort of miracle, accomplished by his great desire to help the right thing to happen, to stave off any shadow of the wrong thing. Whatsoever the reason, Strangeways waited only a moment before turning to his book again. It seemed to be a link in some chain slowly forming itself to drag him back from his wanderings. And T. Tembarom, lightly sweating as a frightened horse will, sat smoking another pipe and listening intently to “Satires” and “Lampoons,” read aloud in the Latin of 65 B. C.
“By gee!” he said faithfully, at intervals, when he saw on the reader's face that the moment was ripe. “He knew it all—old Horace—didn't he?”
He had steered his charge back. Things were coming along the line to him. He'd learned Latin at one of these big English schools. Boys always learned Latin, the duke had told him. They just had to. Most of them hated it like thunder, and they used to be caned when they didn't recite it right. Perhaps if he went on he'd begin to remember the school. A queer part of it was that he did not seem to notice that he was not reading his own language.
He did not, in fact, seem to remember anything in particular, but went on quite naturally for some minutes. He had replaced Horace on the shelf and was on the point of taking down another volume when he paused, as if recalling something else.