Arthur (“that bald-faced young Cockney snob,” as John called him) was depressed by the dominating presence of his rival and his visible efficiency. He looked long and thoughtfully at the sheep-shearing.
“Boni pastoris est,” he observed, “tondere oves, non deglubere.”
Aggie shook her pretty head, as much as to say Latin was beyond her; and he was kind enough to translate. “It is the part of a good shepherd to shear, not flay, the sheep.”
“Is that from Virgil?” she asked, looking up into his face with a smile of unstained intellectual innocence.
A terrific struggle arose in young Arthur’s breast. If he said it was from Virgil (it was a thousand to one against her knowing), he might leap into her love at one high bound. If he said he didn’t know where it came from before it got into his Latin exercise, he would be exactly where he was before, which, he reflected, dismally, was nowhere. Whereas, that fellow Hurst was forever on the spot.
On the other hand, where would he be if—if—supposing that she ever found him out?
A thousand to one against it. He who aims high must take high risks. He took them.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s Virgil.” And he added, to clinch the matter, “From the ‘Georgics.’”
The light in her believing eyes told him how inspired he had been.
The more he thought of it the more likely it seemed. A flash of reminiscence from his school-days visited him; he remembered that Virgil did write some things called “Georgics,” and that Georgics were a kind of pastoral, and that pastorals always had sheep in them, and shepherds. It was a good risk, anyhow, and he could see that it was justified by success. When his conscience reproached him for pretending he knew more Latin than he did, he told it that he would soon know heaps. If all by himself, in cold blood, and for no particular reason, he could keep slogging away at a difficult language evening after evening, what couldn’t he do with Aggie’s love as an incentive? Why, he could learn enough Latin to read Virgil in two months, and to teach Aggie, too. And if any one had asked him what good that would do either of them, he would have replied, contemptuously, that some things were ends in themselves.