As the boys and girls filed into the classroom, the professor, who was a little squat man, with a scrubby beard, so thin that one of the girls had said it was really an individual beard, glanced at them over the tops of his spectacles.
“There’s no use asking any of you, I suppose, whether you have your lesson or not,” he snapped, in a high-pitched, jerky voice. “The fire last night would have been a sufficient excuse, I suppose, even if it wasn’t for the fact that you never do have your lesson anyway.”
Then, his eyes resting on Harry, he exclaimed:
“What are you doing in here?”
“I came to recite, sir.”
“Listen, the rest of you. Here’s a boy who has come to recite. Do you, by any chance, happen to be a member of the Rivertown High School, or have you just dropped in like manna sent from Heaven to show the rest of these young idiots that it is possible for a child to know its Latin lesson? What’s your name?”
“Harry Watson,” stammered the boy, his face scarlet at the brusqueness of the Latin instructor’s greeting.
“Where do you come from?”
“Do you like Latin?”