At last they had come to a subject David could appreciate. He pounced on Edward for details as to the positions he played, whether he bowled and how he bowled, what was his average as a batsman, who were his team, questions Edward answered so vaguely as to appear, in David's eyes, as anything but skillful fraud. Still he must make allowances for Edward's lamentable training.
"Your idea of cricket isn't what we call cricket," he said magnanimously, and he bewildered his guest to some lengths by his highly technical exposition of the game. "Where do you go to school?" he asked, after this tedious diversion.
"We have school at home."
"Oh—what form are you in?"
Edward did not know what he meant.
"Where have you got to in arithmetic?" explained David, trying to gauge Edward's progress by his own. "Can you do compound interest? I can, and we've finished South America in geography,—take up Africa next term,—and in Latin we're on the fifth declension. You've begun Latin, haven't you?"
Edward had to confess that these were beyond his range.
"All my work's in Chinese except the English lessons father gives us. We have read the Four Books—"
"The Four Books?" exclaimed David, seizing the first tangible clue to Edward's education. "What are the Four Books? Are they readers?"
Edward was speechless. He could not cope with a mind which had never heard of the Four Books. Yet he could not make capital of his own superior knowledge, as David had been doing, because there was a haughtiness in the latter's manner which made him feel that acquaintance with the Four Books was a thing to be ashamed of.