The presence of this gentle and learned man, the continual sense that he was near, began to soothe the boy’s tremors. And the beautiful language seemed to gird him with the sense of a new and enkindling security. But his terror returned upon him with overmastering power when the moment came in which he was asked personally to continue the theme. The whole of it had long been so familiar to him that he carried every word in his heart, yet when the call was made upon him to recite that for which he required no book, he was so much oppressed with the nameless dread of his surroundings that he could only gasp and burst into tears.
After all the boys had done their tasks after their own private fashion, the master read to them a fable, which the boy recognized gratefully as an old friend out of the ancient authors; also a wonderful tale from similar sources, and a few passages from the life of a great national hero.
The boy was enchanted. The simplicity of the reading made him strangely happy; the themes addressed him with a ravishment he had never felt before. And the horde of fierce creatures all about him, indulging in grimaces and covert horseplay, seemed also to become amenable to this delight. At least their uneasy roughness grew less as the beautiful voice proceeded; and by the time these stories of wonder, wisdom and endeavour were at an end, even the rudest among them had wide eyes and open mouths.
Upon the conclusion of these tales the old school-master wrote a few cabalistic figures on a board, and then said to the boy, “Can you do sums?”
“I—I—I—I d-don’t t-think I—I k-know, sir,” said the boy, stammering timorously.
“Perhaps we will test your knowledge,” said the old man, and added as he smiled in a secret and beautiful manner, “there is one simple question in arithmetic that it is the custom to put to a new scholar on his first appearance among us. Can you tell us what two and two make?”
Now, although the boy was advanced in book-knowledge far beyond his years, he had hardly the rudiments of the practical sciences. Therefore at first he was unable to answer the most primitive of all questions therein, and his confusion was great. And the other boys who had heard this question, which was so simple as to seem ridiculous, observed his distress with a scorn that was far too lofty to conceal.
“What would you say that two and two make?” the school-master asked.
“I—I—I think, sir, they m-make five,” stammered the boy at last.
A shout of laughter arose from the other boys at this grotesque answer.