nd let me know when you cannot
spell a word."

I seated myself, silently wondering what might be the use of the
side-drum in the corner.

"Let me see--let me see--" He thumbed the book for a while,
murmuring words which I could not catch; then thrust it behind his
back with a finger between its pages, straightened himself up, and
declaimed:

"Next of aerial honey, gift divine,
I sing. Maecenas, be once more benign!"

He paused and instructed me how to spell "aerial" and "Maecenas."
The orthography of these having been settled, I asked his advice upon
"benign," which, as written down by me (I forget how) did not seem
convincing.

"You are indisputably an honest boy," said he; "but I have yet to
acquire that degree of patience which, by all accounts, consorts with
my affliction. Continue, pray:

"Prepare the pomp of trifles to behold:
Proud peers--a nation's polity unrolled--
Customs, pursuits--its clans, and how they fight,
Slight things I labour; not for glory slight,
If Heaven attend and Phoebus hearken me.
First, then, for site. Seek and instal your Bee--"

--"With a capital B, if you please. The poet says 'bees': but the
singular, especially if written with a capital, adds in my opinion
that mock-heroic touch which, as the translator must frequently miss
it for all his pains, he had better insert where he can. By the way,
how have you spelt 'Phoebus'?"

"F.e.b.u.s," I answered.

"I feared so," he sighed. "And 'site'?"

"S.i.g.h.t." I felt pretty sure about this. He smote his forehead.

"That is how Miss Plinlimmon taught me," I urged almost defiantly.

"I beg your pardon--'Plinlimmon,' did you say? An unusual name.
Do you indeed know a Miss Plinlimmon?"

"It is the name of my dearest friend, sir."

"Most singular! You cannot tell me, I dare say, if she happens to be
related to my old friend Arthur Plinlimmon?"

"She is his sister."

"This is most interesting. I remember her, then, as a girl.
You must know that Arthur Plinlimmon and I were comrades in the old
Fourth Regiment, and dear friends--are dear friends yet, I trust,
although time and circumstances have separated us. His sister used
to keep house for him before his marriage. A most estimable person!
And pray where did you make her acquaintance?"

"In the hospital, sir."

"The hospital? Not an eleemosynary institution for the diseased, I
hope?"

I did not know what this meant. "