Derrick turned suddenly. Up to that moment he had not noticed that his Aunt Elsie was in the room; and he thought he would not have been more astonished if the bronze figure supporting the droplight had offered to help him.
“Do you know Latin?” he asked, with an emphasis on the pronoun that marked his amazement. His aunt laughed good-naturedly.
“Try me,” she said, as she reached for the book in his hand. “I used to be somewhat familiar with this book, which is open to the very page over which I once puzzled, for—I believe I won’t confess how long; but I’ll venture to guess that this second paragraph is the one that you sit up nights with.”
“You’ve guessed right the first time,” he said, gleefully. “If you can help a fellow out of a snarl like that, I shall conclude you are a witch. None of the boys can make sense of it.”
As he spoke he kicked a hassock toward her and seated himself on it; Aunt Elsie, book in hand, bent toward him, and for the next half hour the two were absorbed. At the end of that time, Derrick gave a triumphant whistle.
“There you are!” he stopped to say, pounding his translation for emphasis. “Straight as preaching; never believed it could be done. I say, Aunt Elsie, you’re a trump! Who would have thought that old—I mean that a woman of your age would—would be interested in Latin!”
Aunt Elsie laughed. “I used to be wonderfully interested in it,” she said. “Very few of the girls in our neighborhood studied Latin; it wasn’t as common then as it is now, but I wanted to do everything that my brother did. The brother you are named for was the best Latin scholar in our school.”
At this Derrick frowned slightly, and cast a quick look at his aunt as he said: “I was named for my grandfather.”
“I know—and for your Uncle Derrick as well; your father’s brother; you know of him, of course?”
By this time they were alone; Jean, after yawning over her books for a while, had declared herself too sleepy to study, and said good-night. A few minutes afterwards Mrs. Forman had slipped away to see if her husband’s head was better, leaving the two absorbed ones to their Latin. Derrick glanced around to make sure that no one else was within hearing before admitting that he had heard of such a person, but had never felt any great desire to claim him as an uncle.