Page:The golden age.djvu/165

A HARVESTING happy intuition, where is it? They get it all from us!'

'They get nothing whatever from us,' I said decidedly: the word German only suggesting Bands, to which Aunt Eliza was bitterly hostile.

'You think not?' he rejoined doubtfully, getting up and walking about the room. 'Well, I applaud such fairness and temperance in so young a critic. They are qualities—in youth—as rare as they are pleasing. But just look at Schrumpffius, for instance—how he struggles and wrestles with a simple γάρ in this very passage here!'

I peeped fearfully through the open door, half-dreading to see some sinuous and snark-like conflict in progress on the mat; but all was still. I saw no trouble at all in the passage, and I said so.

'Precisely,' he cried, delighted. 'To you, who possess the natural scholar's faculty in so happy a degree, there is no difficulty at all. But to this Schrumpffius ——' But here, luckily for me, in came the housekeeper, a clean-looking woman of staid aspect. 115