"Egerton to come up."
Egerton goes up accordingly, with many misgivings, and embarks, like a desperate man, on the loathed infandum Regina jubes.
The result may be gathered from March's observations as he returns me the book.
"Not a line correct, sir; stand down, sir; the finest passage of the poet shamefully mangled and defaced; it is a perfect disgrace to Everdon. Remain in till five, sir; and repeat the whole lesson to Mr. Manners."
"Please, sir, I tried to learn it, sir; indeed I did, sir."
"Don't tell me, sir; tried to learn it, indeed. If it had been French or German, or--or any of these useless branches of learning, you would have had it by heart fast enough; but Latin, sir, Latin is the foundation of a gentleman's education; Latin you were sent here to acquire, and Latin, sir" (with an astounding rap on the desk), "you shall learn, or I'll know the reason why."
I may remark that March, though an excellent scholar, professed utter contempt for all but the dead languages.
I determined to make one more effort to save my half-holiday.
"Please, sir, if I might look over it once more, I could say it when the second class goes down; please, sir, won't you give me another chance?"
March was not, in schoolboy parlance, "half a bad fellow," and he did give me another chance, and I came up to him once more at the conclusion of school, having repeated the whole forty lines to myself without missing a word; but, alas! when I stood again on the step which led up to the dreaded desk, and gave away the book into those uncompromising hands, and heard that stern voice with its "Now, sir, begin," my intellects forsook me altogether, and while the floor seemed to rock under me, I made such blunders and confusion of the chief's oration to the love-sick queen, as drove March to the extremity of that very short tether which he was pleased to call his "patience," and drew upon myself the dreaded condemnation I had fought so hard to escape.