ell, but, father, you have more important things; you have your
writing. The little outside jobs are mine, of course. I've learned it
all from Ted. You really must trust me for that, father.'

'Ah, well, you're a good lad, Nick; and we must see if I cannot set to
seriously in the matter of doing some of this writing you talk of.
It's high time; and it may be easier now we are alone. No, I don't
think I'll get up to supper this evening, Nick. I'm not very well, to
tell the truth, and a quiet night's rest here will be best for me.'

We had a few fowls then in a little bush run, and I presently had a
new-laid egg beaten up for my patient. This he took to oblige me; but
his 'quiet night's rest' did not amount to much, for each time I waked
through the night I knew, either by the light burning beside him, or
by some slight movement he made, that my father was awake.

VI

In this completely solitary way we lived for some eight months after
Ted left us. There were times when my father seemed cheery and in much
better health. In such periods he would concern himself a good deal in
the matter of my education.

'It may never be so valuable to you as Ted's "eddication,"' he said;
'but a gentleman should have some acquaintance with the classics,
Nick, both in our tongue (the nobility of which is not near so well
understood as it might be) and in the tongues of the ancients.'

Once he said: 'We have lived our own Odyssey, old fellow, without
writing it; but I'd like you to be able to read Homer's.'

As a fact, I never have got so far as to read it with any comfort in
the original; and I suppose a practical educationalist would say that
such fitful, desultory instruction as I did receive from my father in
our cuddy living-room on board the _Livorno_ was quite valueless. But
I fancy the expert would be wrong in this, as experts sometimes are.
In the schoolman's sense I learned little or nothing. But natheless I
believe these hours spent with my father among his books, and yet
more, it may be, other hours spent with him when he had no thought of
teaching me, had their very real value in the process of my mental
development. If they did not give me much of actual knowledge, they
helped to give me a mind of sorts, an inclination or bent toward those
directions in which intellectual culture is obtainable. Else, surely,
I had remained all my days a hewer of wood and a drawer of water--with
more of health in mind and body and mea