“As much as you like,” said the instructor. “But it is something more. When I am with the child I am in Athens itself. Chicago makes me blink when I come out.”
The professor laughed. The next day he made an appointment to go himself to see the child. He was a famous epigraphist and an authority in his subject. He had spent years in Greece—with his nose, for the most part, held close to bits of parchment and stone.
When he came away, he was laughing softly. “I am going over for a year,” he said, when he met the instructor that afternoon in the corridor.
“Did you see the little Harris girl?” asked the instructor.
The professor paused. “Yes, I saw her.”
“How did she strike you?”
“She struck me dumb,” said the professor. “I listened for the best part of an hour while she expounded things to me—asked me questions I couldn’t answer, mostly.” He chuckled a little. “I felt like a fool,” he added, frankly, “and it felt good.”
The instructor smiled. “I go through it twice a week. The trouble seems to be that she’s alive, and that she thinks everything Greek is alive, too.”
The professor nodded. “It’s never occurred to her it’s dead and done with, these thousand years and more.” He gave a little sigh. “Sometimes I’ve wondered myself whether it is—quite as dead as it looks to you and me,” he added. “You know that grain—wheat or something—that Blackman took from the Egyptian mummy he brought over last spring—”
“Yes, he planted it—”