“A scholar, then?”
“A very fine and finished scholar, though a faddist of the rankest type. Speaks Latin as readily as he does English.”
“Old?”
“Over seventy.”
“Rich?”
“Not in money. Taxes on his big place keep him pinched; that and his passion for buying all kinds of old and rare books. He’s got, perhaps an income of five thousand, clear, of which about three thousand goes in book auctions.”
“Any family?”
“No. Lives with two ancient colored servants who look after him.”
“How did our friend from B. C. connect up with him?”
“Oh, he ran to the old colonel like a chick to its hen. You see, there aren’t so very many Latinists in town during the hot weather. Perhaps eighteen or twenty in all came from about here and from Washington to see the prodigy in ‘the Park of the Boar,’ after the advertisement appeared. He wouldn’t have anything to do with any of us. Pretended he didn’t understand our kind of Latin. I offered him a place, myself, at a wage of more denarii than I could well afford. I wanted a chance to study him. Then came the colonel and fairy grabbed him. So I sent for you—in my artless professional way.”