“No, no,” he replied. “There are two better than I. Besides, you know very well that everybody—except downright asses—understands the forty-seventh proposition.”
“Except downright asses!” After twenty-seven years I heard, from the lips of my own son, almost the very identical words which Professor Roveni had used on the memorable day of the examination. And this time they were heightened by the savage irony of the added “You know very well!”
I wished to save appearances, and added in haste—
“Of course I know that. I was only in fun. I hope you would not be such a fool as to be proud of a small thing like that.”
Meanwhile, however, my Newton had repented of his too sweeping assertion.
“After all,” he went on, with some embarrassment, “there are some who never attend to their lesson, and then ... even if they are not asses....”
It seemed to me that he was offering me a loophole of escape, and with a sudden impulse of candour—
“That must be the way of it,” I said. “I suppose I never paid attention.”
“How! You?” exclaimed my boy, reddening to the roots of his hair. Yet ... I would bet something that, at the bottom of his heart, he was longing to laugh.
I put my hand over his mouth.