“Why, yes, I suppose so,” said Bar. “I looked into it for the first time to-day.”
“Give me your hand,” said Zeb, enthusiastically. “I’m proud to meet a man of your age who can say that. But do you really mean to study it this time?”
“Of course. That’s what I came here for—Greek and the rest of it.”
“Then so will I,” said Zeb. “I have striven for years to stir up old Sol and myself on the Greek question, but have failed.”
A mournful failure it had been, although Zeb had not been a bad scholar in some other branches. He had studied, in fact, as most boys do under teachers like Dr. Dryer, very much as it had pleased him.
As a general thing it does not please them to do much hard work in Greek, and so they end by knowing even less about it than do their “instructors,” to put it very strongly.
Bar and Val were off now to join Brayton, and in a few minutes more the latter had begun to forget his pleasant “drive” in his curiosity over the results of Bar’s first attempt at the grand old language.
It was little more than very successful “memorizing,” of course, but Brayton saw that a good deal could be done with a memory like that, and he was especially delighted at having so promising a pupil.
He was not yet so experienced or so enthusiastic a teacher as to have rejoiced over the acquisition of a “dull boy.”
No teacher is a thoroughly good one till he reaches that point.