Beatrice was rearranging fresh paper and sharp pencils on her parlor table, and hesitating between passages from Virgil and Horace in a dog-eared anthology of Latin suitable for schoolboys, when a loud knocking on the back door indicated the usual arrival of her pupils via the alley. Abigail came from Mrs. Turber’s side of the house to let them in, and there seemed to be some sharp discussion in the scullery before Snout shuffled through the doorway alone, cap in hand. As always, he had clearly been subject to the scrutiny of his mother, for he was scrubbed red about the ears and his wet hair was slicked to his head. His clothes, though threadbare, were brushed and ironed, and Beatrice appreciated such respect and felt it as a quiet rebuke to her urge to warn Abigail about the young Gypsy. He had removed his boots in the scullery and hopped into the parlor, twisting his socks as best he could to disguise several holes. She almost gave him a smile, but the absence of his fellow pupils meant she must not be charmed, but must offer her most severe frown.
“Arty and Jack are awful sick, miss,” Snout began. He looked her straight in the eye as he lied, and his face wore an impressive frown of concern. “Might be the bronchitis again, miss. They both had it bad in the winter.” Bronchitis was a stubborn pestilence in the damp British winters, and her father’s family had fussed about it as if it might carry him off instead of the cancer. She was not pleased that Snout would raise such a specter as an excuse, nor that he would think her so gullible as to accept bronchitis in the middle of one of the sunniest and driest summers on record. But she understood that he was the scapegoat, delivering the message for boys who were no doubt among the dozens of children waving at troop trains from the railway bridge, or watching Colonel Wheaton’s reserves drilling at their camp out in the fields.
“I hope they do not plan to die just to avoid my lessons,” she said. The gloom with which all three boys obviously regarded the good fortune of having a Latin tutor for the summer was almost comical. She was not surprised that they should attempt to evade her. “I trust you have no such life-threatening symptoms, young man.”
“A bit of a tickle in the throat, miss,” said Snout. “Perhaps I should go home and get into bed just in case.”
“Pity you cannot stay to eat up all the buns and biscuits,” said Beatrice, as Abigail came in with a jug of elderflower cordial and a plate with the buns and some lumps of partial biscuit. “It was to be a treat and now I’m sure they will go quite to waste.”
“I can stay if it doesn’t bother you, miss,” said Snout, his eyes widening. “I did my homework, and I brought their homework with me too.” He rummaged in a battered leather satchel and produced the dirty, ink-stained copybooks in which they attempted to translate the passages from Cicero or Caesar she set them.
“I would be delighted if you would stay,” said Beatrice. “I would like to show you a book that is very special to me.” She went to the nearest bookcase and took down the slim leather-bound copy of Virgil’s Aeneid from which her father had taught her the poetry of Latin. “Perhaps you can look at this while I mark your work. Start anywhere you like.”
As she marked her changes, she could see Snout munching on biscuits and slurping from his cup. He seemed to become so engaged in his reading that he reached for both without looking, and she bit her tongue and tried not to picture splashes of cordial and crumbs spoiling the pages of her father’s precious text. She was surprised to find that Snout continued to display a simple but accurate sense of translation and that his handwriting, while abysmal, showed some laborious care. Arty and Jack made fewer ink blots, but each rushed into easy translation mistakes, and Jack seemed to have a policy of never looking back, because his paragraphs always finished in cheerful incomprehensibility. When she was done, she joined Snout at the table in the window. He looked up from the book, his face sticky with bun, and gave her an unexpected grin.
“It’s a grand story, the Aeneid, isn’t it, miss?” he said, his eyes lit up with eagerness. “You can smell Troy burning and you think Aeneas must die, but then he comes striding out of the flames with his old father on his back.”
“He is a virtuous son,” said Beatrice quietly. She could not read those books of the epic now without a tear for her own father, who had weighed so little at the end that she would gladly have carried him beyond death’s reach.
“He has nothing left, but he never gives up, does he?” said Snout. “And his men—‘One day you will look back on your problems as if they were nothing,’ he says to ’em. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.”
“In the future you may be helped by remembering the past,” Beatrice added.
“If you don’t die first, of course,” added Snout. “He lost half his ships just on the way to Italy.”
“I’ve always thought Virgil’s Aeneid quite the most exciting of the Roman texts,” said Beatrice. “Would you enjoy us all reading it together?”
“I’m not sure the others will,” said Snout, wrinkling his nose in doubt. “Usually, we just read a passage or two and use the dictionary to help us write it out?” Though he did his best to appear uninterested, she noticed he brushed some crumbs carefully from her father’s book and closed it with unexpected gentleness.
“Written translation is far too much work for the summer, don’t you think, Snout?” she asked and was amused to see how suspicion and interest mingled in his face. “It’s much more entertaining to read the whole story and just argue about it.”
“I’m not sure Arty and Jack’d see it as easier, miss,” he said. “You’d really have to try and understand what it says, so you know who lives and who’s all lying on the ground with his head chopped right down the middle and his cheeks and brains falling on opposite shoulders.”
“It’s true the book is rife with bloody gore,” said Beatrice.
“The bit where the Queen of Carthage climbs the funeral pyre and stabs herself with a sword, miss; that’s a gory bit,” he added.
“Would it be too much, I wonder.”
As Snout hastened to assure her that they could stomach the full horrors of ancient combat, Beatrice smiled and hid her surprise that the boy had obviously already read the entire epic before.
“Maybe it would help if we acted it out?” she said. A vague plan to excite the whole Latin class with the fun of group performance began to form in her head. “We could acquire some swords and those round shields…”
“And bash each other in the head while we recite?” said Snout. “I’m all for that, miss.”
“Very well, we are agreed,” she said. “We will spend the summer enjoying our Aeneid again; and in the autumn you three will help me bring the excitement of Aeneas and his quest to the whole Latin class.”
“I’m not sure Arty and Jack are going to like it,” said Snout, frowning again. “They’ll probably work out how to blame me for it somehow.”
Beatrice sighed in frustration. “Mr. Grange informed me that you might have a serious chance at the annual Latin Scholarship if you work hard,” she said. “If you keep worrying about what others will say, I’m afraid you’ll deny yourself a real future, young man.”
“Me, sit for a scholarship?” said Snout. He snorted. “They’ll never give one to the likes of me, miss.”
“It’s offered strictly on merit, Snout,” she said. “No one will be counting the holes in your socks.”
“Sorry, miss.” He blushed, and Beatrice regretted her snappishness. No doubt the boy suffered much at the hands of his peers.
“We can talk more about scholarships when the term begins,” she continued. “In the meantime, I suggest you grumble loudly when you tell Arty and Jack of my dreadful plans, but be sure to emphasize the cordial and buns.” Bribery might not be financially possible or morally defensible for the Latin class she would teach in the autumn term, but she smiled to know that for the summer she had two she could bribe and one who, disguised as the most prickly and unprepossessing of boys, had the makings of a real scholar.
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