Montagu, unlike Miss Esperance, who never allowed her back to "come in contact with her chair," lolled comfortably in his, disposed to argue the question. "I think it matters very much how people look," he said decidedly. "I hope I shall grow up to look like Achilles in the book Mr. Wycherly gave me."
Miss Esperance looked down at the thin, little, brown boy beside her, remarking dryly: "Well, at present, Montagu, I see small likelihood of any such transformation," and returned to the perusal of "The History of More Children than One."
But Montagu had not yet "threshed the subject out." In spite of his aunt's forefinger laid entreatingly at the line where he had left off, he continued in the tone of one who grants something to a vanquished foe. "Of course, young people look nicer in Greek clothes—I don't think, f'r instance (Montagu was very fond of "for instance," a favourite phrase of Mr. Wycherly's), that Mr. Gloag would look nice with only a wee towel."
Miss Esperance chuckled, and was fain to close the "History of More Children than One" for that day.
All this time those two dear old people waited in silence—Miss Esperance fondly remembering Montagu's unconscious compliment of the morning; Mr. Wycherly absorbed in his vision of the girl who, clad in a high-waisted, skimpy, muslin frock, with sandalled, twinkling feet, came dancing down the broad central path of a Shropshire garden nearly sixty years ago.
The sunlight was on the grass, the air charged heavily with the scent of the tall lilies on either hand, and she held out her arms toward him, singing as she came.
Miss Esperance gave a faint little cough, and Mr. Wycherly came back to the present with a start, saying: "Doubtless I have been wrong in the way I have taught Montagu. For the future we must have more grammar and less romance. I am sorry you should have been worried. It is my fault."
"No, no!" cried Miss Esperance. "I am sure that all you have done, all you are doing, is right and wise, but I—what am I to do? How can I make him see the beauty and priceless value of that knowledge without which all other knowledge is as dust and ashes?"
Mr. Wycherly turned to look at Miss Esperance, and fresh as he was from his vision of a woman in all the radiance of her first youth and beauty, he agreed with Montagu that there is a very beautiful oldness, and that such beauty is to the understanding heart perhaps most fair of all.
She held out her hands in her eagerness, and leant forward, straining her eyes to read his face in the shadow.