"Ah, hyacinths!" he murmured. "Ah yes; I've read so much about them. So these are hyacinths! Such a pretty story the Greeks had. You remember it, no doubt?"
She said she did; but, schoolmaster that he was, he went right on:
"Apollo loved young Hyacinthus—or Huakinthos, as the Greeks called it—and was teaching him to throw the discus, when a jealous breeze blew the discus aside. It struck the boy in the forehead. He fell dead, and from his blood this flower sprang. The petals, they said, were marked with the letters Ai, Ai!—Alas! Alas! And the poet Moschus, you remember, in his 'Lament for Bion,' says:
"Nun huakinthe lalei ta sa grammata kai pleon aiai!
"Or, as I once Englished it—let me see, I put it into hexameters—it was a long while ago. Ah, I have it!"
And with the orotund notes a poet assumes when reciting his own words, he intoned:
"Now, little hyacinth, babble thy syllables—louder yet—Aiai! Whimper with all of thy petals; a beautiful singer has perished."
Professor Binley stared at him in amazement and cried: "Charming! Beautiful! Your own translation, you say?"
And he, somewhat shaken by her enthusiasm, waved it aside.
"A little exercise of my Freshman year. But to get back to our—hyacinths: Theocritus, you remember, speaks of the 'lettered hyacinth.' May I see whether we can find the words there?"