Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/118

 which it was too much trouble for him to tack on for their benefit. The Æneid they were doing was the one about the boat-race; and what Mr. Haigh (who had adorned both flood and field at Cambridge) did not know about aquatics ancient and modern was obviously not worth knowing. He could handle a trireme on the blackboard as though he had rowed in one in the Mays, and accompany the proceeding with a running report worthy of a sporting journalist. But let there be one skeleton at the feast of reason, one Jan who could not or would not understand, and the whole hour might go in an unseemly duel between intemperate intellect and stubborn imbecility. Otherwise a gloating and sonorous Haigh would wind up the morning with Conington's translation of the lesson; and this was one of those gratifying occasions; in fact, Jan was attending as he had never before attended, when one couplet caught his fancy to the exclusion of all that followed.

"Perhaps I can," said Jan to himself, "if I think I can. I will think I can, and then we'll see."

Haigh had shut the book and was putting a question to the favoured few at the top of the form. "Conington has one fine phrase here," he said. "I wonder if any of you noticed it? Possunt quia posse videntur; did you notice how he renders that?"

The favoured few had not noticed. They looked seriously concerned about it. The body of the form took its discomfiture more philosophically, having less to lose. No one seemed to connect the phrase with its English equivalent, and Mr. Haigh was manifestly displeased. "Possunt quia posse videntur!" he repeated ironically as he reached the dregs; and at the very last moment Jan's fingers flew out with a Sunday-school snap.