there in a snug first-floor room, where yellow
parrots sprawled on the painted wall, and a mild-mannered gentleman with
a russet wig motioned us to sit down.

Our life ran in current for long enough. We sat together at Mr. Davies's
feet--I am speaking metaphorically, for in reality we sat opposite to
him--and we thumbed our Cordery and our Nepos together, and made such
progress as our natures and our application permitted. Mine, to be
honest, was little enough, for I hated my grammar cordially.

Lancelot was not like me in this, any more than in bodily favour; he was
keen of wit and quick of memory; he was quick in learning, yet as modest
as he was clever, for he never sought in any way to lord it over me
because I, poor dunce, was not of such nimble parts as himself.

It was the hardest task in the world for me to keep my eyes and my fancy
upon the pages of my book. My eyes were always straying from the print,
first to the painted parrots on the walls, and then, by natural
succession, to the window. Once there, my fancy would put on free wings,
and my thoughts would stray joyously off among the salt marshes, where
the pools shone in the sunlight and a sweet air blew. Or I would stand
upon the downs and look along the curve of cliffs, and note the ships
sailing round the promontory, and the flashes of the sea beyond, and
feel in fancy the breeze blowing through my hair, and puffing away all
the nonsense I had been poring over in the room.

At such times I would quite forget myself, and sit staring into vacancy,
till Mr. Davies, lifting his nose from his volume, would note my absence
and call on me by name, and thump his desk, and startle me with some
question on the matter we were supposed to have in hand. A mighty
matter, truly, the name of some emperor or the date of some
campaign--matter infinitely less real than the name of the ship that
was leaving the harbour or the sunlight on the incoming sail. And I
would answer at random and amiss, and earn reproof. Yet there were
things which I knew well enough, too, and could have given him shrewd
and precise answers concerning them.

Lancelot Amber was never much my companion away from Mr. Davies's room.
His father, whose name he perpetuated, had been a simple, gentle
gentleman and scholar who had married, as one of his kin counted it,
beneath him, because he had married the woman he loved. The woman he
loved was indeed of humble birth, but she made him a fair wife and