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Page 34
"But I have a recitation the first hour," said Will blankly. "I'll 'cut'
it, though, for it isn't every day one has his daddy with him, and I
wouldn't lose a minute of your time here, pop, for ten hours with old
Splinter. I have Greek, you know, the first hour in the morning. Oh,
I've got 'cuts' to burn," he added hastily as an unspoken protest
appeared in the expression on his father's face. "You needn't worry
about that."
"I don't want you to lose any recitation because I am here," said his
father quietly. "I sha'n't want to come again if my coming interferes
with your work, and as it is I have serious doubts--"
"All right, pop," replied Will patting his father affectionately on the
shoulder. "I'll go to Splinter's class, though I know he'll 'go for' me
too. I won't do a thing that'll ever keep you from showing up here in
Winthrop again."
On Monday morning after the exercises in the chapel, Mr. Phelps went to
Will's room and waited till the hour should pass and the eager-hearted
boy should return. As the great clock in the tower rang out the hour he
arose and stood in front of the window peering out across the campus at
the building where Will was at work, but the stroke had scarcely ceased
before he beheld the lad run swiftly down the steps and speed along the
pathway toward his room as if he were running for a prize. The
expression in the man's eyes was soft and there was also a suspicious
moisture in them as well as he watched his boy. Was it only a dream or
reality? Only a few short years ago and he had been an eager-hearted boy
speeding over the same pathway (he smiled as he thought how the "speed"
was never displayed on his way to the recitation building), and now it
was his own boy who was sharing in the life of old Winthrop and
doubtless he himself was in the minds of the young students relegated to
that remote and distant period when the "old grads" were supposed to be
young. Doubtless to them it was a time as remote as that when Homer's
heroes contended in battle or the fauns and satyrs peopled the wooded
hills and plains. And yet how vital it all was to him. He watched the
groups of students moving across the campus, and as the sound of their
shouts or laughter or the words of some song rose on the autumn air, it
seemed to the man that he needed only to close his eyes and the old life
would return--a life so like the present that it did not seem possible
that a great gulf of thirty years lay between.
Mr. Phelps' meditations were interrupted by the entrance of Will, who
burst into the room with the force of a small whirlwind.
"Here I am, pop!" he exclaimed as he tossed his books upon his couch and
threw his cap to the opposite side of the room. "Old Splinter stuck me
good this morning, but I can stand it as long as you are here."
"Who is Splinter?"
"Why, don't you know? I thought everybody knew Splinter. He's our
professor of Greek and the biggest fraud in the whole faculty."
"What's the trouble with him?" Mr. Phelps spoke quietly but there was
something in his voice that betrayed a deeper feeling and one that Will
was quick to perceive and that gave him a twinge of uneasiness as well.
"Oh, he's hard as nails. He must have 'ichor' in his veins, not blood. I
don't believe he ever was a boy. He must have been like Pallas Athen�.
Wasn't she the lady that sprang full-fledged from the brain of Zeus?
Well, I've a notion that Splinter yelled in Greek when he was a baby.
That is, if he ever was an infant, and called for his bottle in dactylic
hexameter. Oh, I know lots about Greek, pop," laughed Will as his father
smiled. "I know the alphabet and a whole lot of things even if Splinter
thinks I don't."
"Doesn't he think you know much about your Greek?"
"Well, he doesn't seem to be overburdened with the weight of his opinion
of me. He just looks upon me, I'm afraid, as if I was not a bright and
shining light. 'Learn Greek or grow up in ignorance,' that's the burden
of his song, and I've sometimes thought that about all the fun he has in
life is flunking freshmen."
"How about the freshmen?"
"You mean me? Honestly, pop, I haven't done very well in my Greek; but I
don't think it's all my fault. I've worked on it as I haven't worked on
anything else in college. I've done my part, but Splinter doesn't seem
to believe it. What am I going to do about it?"
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