Oh, all right. That wasn’t so bad. I had no objection to assist Miss Steele, or Miss Bousfield, for the matter of that, in brushing-up their classics, as long as the girls at large were kept out of the way.
I acknowledged Miss Steele’s greeting in a patronising way, and then looked about for a chair. I wished Mr Evans and his lot could see how far removed I was from the common schoolgirl; here were two females actually going to pick my brains for their own good. If women must learn Latin at all, they could hardly do better than secure a public schoolboy to brush them up.
“Now, let us see,” said Miss Bousfield, “how far we have all got. Miss Steele, you have read some Cicero, I know, already.”
Cicero! That girl read Cicero, when I had barely begun Caesar! This was a crusher for me. How about the brushing-up now?
“And you, Jones, have you begun Cicero yet?”
“Well, no,” I said, “not yet.”
“Caesar, then; I think we shall both be ready to take that up again. How far were you—or shall we begin at the beginning?”
“Better begin at the beginning,” said I, anxious not to have to confess that I had not yet got through the first chapter.
But before we had gone many lines, Miss Bousfield, I could see, began to have her doubts about my syntax; and after a little conference about syntax, the question of verbs came up, unpleasantly for me; and after deciding we had a little brushing-up to do there, the conversation turned on declensions, a subject on which I had very little definite information to afford to these two females in distress.
I verily believe we should have come to exchanging views on the indefinite article itself, had not Miss Bousfield taken the bull by the horns, and said—