always with perfect _aplomb_ and self-possession; and I have
heard older men remark since, that in him it did not appear the
precocity of "the rising generation," but rather the confidence of one
who knew his subject well. Perhaps the fact of his father having died
when he was an infant, and his having always been suzerain among his
women at home, may have had something to do with this. An absurd
instance of what I have been saying happened just before Guy left.

By time-honored custom, four or five of the Sixth were invited every
week to dine with the head master. They were not, strictly speaking,
convivial, those solemn banquets; where the host was condescendingly
affable, and his guests cheerful, as it were, under protest; resembling
somewhat the entertainments in the captain's cabin, where the chief is
unpopular.

Our Archididascalus was a kind-hearted, honest man, albeit, by virtue
of his office, somewhat strict and stern. You could read the
_Categories_ in the wrinkles of his colorless face, and contested
passages of Thucydides in the crows'-feet round his eyes. The
everlasting grind at the educational tread-mill had worn away all he
might once have had of imagination; he translated with precisely the
same intonations the Tusculan _Disputations_ and--_Eros anikate machan._

He had lately taken to himself a wife, his junior by a score of years.
The academic atmosphere had not had time then to freeze her into the
dignity befitting her position; when I met her ten years later, she was
steady and staid enough, poor thing, to have been the wife of Grotius.

Guy sat next to her that evening, and before the first course was over a
decided flirtation was established. The pretty hostess, albeit wife of a
doctor and daughter of a dean, had evidently a strong coquettish element
in her composition, and a very slight spark was sufficient to relight
the _veteris vestigia flammae._

For some time her husband did not seem to realize the position; but
gradually his sentences grew rare and curt; he opened his mouth, no
longer to let fall the pearls of his wisdom, but to stop it with savory
meat; finally this last resource failed, and he sat, looking wrathfully
but helplessly on the proceedings at the other end of the table--a
lamentable instance of prostrated ecclesiastical dignity. His disgust,
however, was far exceeded by the horror of one of the party, a meek,
cadaverous-looking boy, whose parents lived in the town, and who