"Sir, I never confessed to him that I could not! And he never found me out! Why should he? I was his servant, engaged on purely domestic duties. Such clerical work as dealing with tradesmen involved was attended to by the housekeeper. One day my master asked me if I had read the Prime Minister's speech, and I replied that I never read the newspapers. I intended the statement to be a confession, leading up to a fuller confession; but instead, the good old man took me to mean that I despised politics and journalism and was interested only in philosophy and literature. From that day he admitted me to all the privileges of his literary companionship. His favourite hobby was reading aloud—preferably passages from the Classics—and he had few to read to. None, in fact. I was appointed his audience. Every evening we sat together and he read aloud to me, with every kind of illuminating comment. My peculiar faculty for memorization, intensified by the absence of any other medium of self-cultivation, enabled me to commit to memory the greater part of what he read and said. At the end of ten years I could quote long passages from most of the standard works of literature. When the dear old man died, I was a human fountain of quotations—poetical, historical, philosophical. Just that, and nothing more. Once more I had to make a niche for myself in the world. My accumulated lore was my sole asset. So I took this little house, and set up my useless—because mainly ornamental—little library, and endeavoured to win the respect of my new neighbours by dispensing an erudition which was in reality second-hand. Second-hand, sir!" He looked up wistfully. "Am I an impostor?"
"All learning is second-hand," I said. "You are not an impostor."
He rose to his feet, and took my hand.
"You have lifted a load from my mind," he said. "Confession is good for the soul. But you will understand now why I cannot deliver that Address."
"Why not?" I repeated. "I will get a copy of it for you, and you can learn it by heart."
"You can do that?"
"Certainly."
The colour came back to his face.
"The time is short," he said eagerly—"very short; and my memory is not what it was: but I will try. Ada shall read it to me, and read it to me, and read it to me, until I am word-perfect! I will succeed! It will be wonderful!"
"It will score off Mould and Pettigrew too," I added spitefully.