Richard had taken upon himself; and thus Ethel had heard so
little about them for a long time past, that even in her vexation and
desire to have them over, she listened with interest, desirous to judge
what sort of place Tom might be likely to take in school.

She did not perceive that this made Richard nervous and uneasy. He had a
great dislike to spectators of Latin lessons; he never had forgotten an
unlucky occasion, some years back, when his father was examining him
in the Georgics, and he, dull by nature, and duller by confusion and
timidity, had gone on rendering word for word--enim for, seges a crop,
lini of mud, urit burns, campum the field, avenae a crop of pipe, urit
burns it; when Norman and Ethel had first warned him of the beauty of
his translation by an explosion of laughing, when his father had shut
the book with a bounce, shaken his head in utter despair, and told him
to give up all thoughts of doing anything--and when Margaret had cried
with vexation. Since that time, he had never been happy when any one was
in earshot of a lesson; but to-day he had no escape--Harry lay on the
rug reading, and Ethel sat forlorn over her books on the sofa. Tom,
however, was bright enough, declined his Greek nouns irreproachably, and
construed his Latin so well, that Ethel could not help putting in a word
or two of commendation, and auguring the third form. "Do let him off the
parsing, Ritchie," said she coaxingly--"he has said it so well, and I
want you so much."

"I am afraid I must not," said Richard; who, to her surprise, did not
look pleased or satisfied with the prosperous translation; "but come,
Tom, you shan't have many words, if you really know them."

Tom twisted and looked rather cross, but when asked to parse the word
viribus, answered readily and correctly.

"Very well, only two more--affuit?"

"Third person singular, praeter perfect tense of the verb affo, affis,
affui, affere," gabbled off Tom with such confidence, that though Ethel
gave an indignant jump, Richard was almost startled into letting it
pass, and disbelieving himself. He remonstrated in a somewhat hesitating
voice. "Did you find that in the dictionary?" said he; "I thought affui
came from adsum."

"Oh, to be sure, stupid fool of a word, so it does!" said Tom hastily.
"I had forgot--adsum, ades, affui, adesse."

Richard said no more, but proposed the word oppositus.

"Adjective."

Ethel was surprised, for she remembered that it was, in