ke Pallas Athenae.
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?"

Will in spite of his light-hearted ways, was seriously troubled and his
father was silent for a brief time before he responded to the boy's
question.

CHAPTER XI

THE PERPETUAL PROBLEM

"I was aware that you were having trouble with your Greek," said Mr.
Phelps quietly, "and that was one of my reasons for stopping over here."

"You were? How did you know?"

"I had received word from the secretary of the faculty. He sent me a
formal note announcing that your work was so low that it was more than
probable you would fail in your mid-year examination."

For a moment Will Phelps was silent. His face became colorless and his
heart seemed almost to rise in his throat. Fail in his mid-year's? A
"warning" sent home to his father? To the inexperienced young student it
seemed for a moment as if he was disgraced in the eyes of all his
friends. He knew that his work had been of a low grade, but never for a
moment had he considered it as being at all serious. So many of his
newly formed friends in the college had been speaking of their
conditions and low grades as a matter of course and had referred to them
laughingly, much as if they were good jokes to be enjoyed that Will too
had come almost to feel that his own trouble was not a serious one. And
Splinter was the one to be blamed for the most of it, he was convinced.
The words of his father, however, had presented the matter