years, who ambled forward rather sheepishly and gave me a moist and rather flabby hand to shake.

   He was painfully embarrassed. If I had been an ogre and Jerry the youth allotted for his repast, he could not have shown more distress. He was distinctly nursery-bred and, of course, unused to visitors, but he managed a smile, and I saw that he was making the best of a bad job. After the preliminaries of introduction, amid which Mr. Radford, the steward of the estate, appeared, I managed to get the boy aside.

   "I feel a good deal like the Minotaur, Jerry. Did you ever hear of the Minotaur?"

   He hadn't, and so I told him the story. "But I'm not going to eat

    you

   ," I laughed.

   I had broken the ice, for a smile, a genuine joyous smile, broke slowly and then flowed in generous ripples across his face.

   "You're different, aren't you?" he said presently, his brown eyes now gravely appraising me.

   "How different, Jerry?" I asked.

   He hesitated a moment and then:

   "I—I thought you'd come all in black with a lot of grammar books under your arms."

   "I don't use 'em," I said. "I'm a boy, just like you, only I've got long trousers on. We're not going to bother about books for awhile."

   He still inspected me as though he wasn't quite sure it wasn't all a mistake. And then again:

   "Can you talk Latin?"

   "Bless you, I'm afraid not."

   "Oh!" he sighed, though whether in relief or disappointment I couldn't say.

   "But you can do sums in your head and spell hippopotamus?"

   "I might," I laughed. "But I wouldn't if I didn't have to."

 Prev. P 10/261 next