nemployed time on his much-abused holiday task for the ensuing quarter
at Marlby.

And when the candles were lit, the girls would sketch or work, and
Julian or Kennedy would read or translate to them aloud. Sometimes they
spent what Mr Kennedy used to call "an evening with the immortals," and
taking some volume of the poets, would each choose a favourite passage
to read aloud in turn. This was Mr Kennedy's great delight, and he got
quite enthusiastic when the well-remembered lines came back to him with
fresh beauty, borne on the pleasant voices of Eva, Julian, or Cyril,
like an old jewel when new facets are cut on its lustrous surface.

"Stop there; that's an immortal, lad--an immortal," he would say to
Cyril, when the boy seemed to be passing over some flower of poetic
thought without sufficient admiration; and then he would repeat the
passage from memory with such just emphasis, that on these evenings all
felt that they were laying up precious thoughts for happy future hours.

"Now, Mrs Dudley, and you young ladies, we're going to translate you
part of a Greek novel to-night," said Julian.

"A Greek novel!" said Cyril, with a touch of incredulous suspicion.
"Those old creatures didn't write novels, did they?"

"Only the best novel that ever was written, Cyril."

"What's it called?"

"The Odyssey."

"Oh, what a chouse! You don't mean to call that a novel, do you?"

"Well, let the ladies decide."

So he read to them how Ulysses returned in the guise of a beggar, after
twenty years of war and wandering to his own palace-door, and saw the
haughty suitors revelling in his halls; and how, as he reached the door,
Argus, the hunting-dog, now old and neglected, and full of fleas,
recollected him, when all had forgotten him, and fawned upon him, and
licked his hand and died; and how the suitors insulted him, and one of
them threw a foot-stool at him, which by one quick move he avoided, and
said nothing, and another flung a shin-bone at his head, which he caught
in his hand, and said nothing, but only smiled grimly in his heart--ever
so little, a grim, sardonic smile and how the old nurse recognised him
by the scar of the boar's tusk on his leg, but he quickly repressed the
exclamation of wonderment which sprang to her lips; and how he sat,
ragged but princely, by the fire in his hall, and the red light
flickered over him, and he spake to the suitors words of solemn warning;
and how, when Agelaus warned them, a str