"Yes, Sir," said I, confused.
He laughed, clapped me on the shoulder, called me David, Jack the Giant-Killer, and bade me deliver the washing-book. I fumbled in the pocket of my torn jacket and handed him a greasy, dog's-eared mass of paper. As soon as his eyes fell on it, I realised my mistake, and produced the washing book from the other pocket.
"I've given you the wrong one, Sir," said I, reaching for the treasure I had surrendered.
But he threw himself on his bed and dived his legs beneath the clothes.
"Wonderful!" he cried. "He is four foot nothing, he looks like a yard of pack-thread, he would fight me for an ill-washed shirt and a pair of holes with bits of sock round them, and he reads 'Paradise Lost'!"
He made a gesture of throwing the disreputable epic at my head, and I curved my arm in an attitude only too familiarly defensive.
"I found it in a bundle of washing, Sir," I cried apologetically.
At home reading was the unforgivable sin. Had my mother discovered me poring over the half intelligible but wholly fascinating story of Adam and Eve and the Devil, she would have beaten me with the first implement to her hand. I had a moment's terror lest the possession of a work of literature should be so horrible a crime that even Paragot would chastise me.
To my consternation he thrust the tattered thing—it was an antiquated sixpenny edition—under my nose and commanded me to read.
"'Of Man's first disobedience'—Go on. If you can read it intelligently I'll pay your mother. If you can't I'll write to her politely to say that I resent having my washing sent home by persons of no education."