“What does she do?” said Eugene.
“She wants to be an actress,” said George Graves, laughing throatily.
“You have to work too damn hard for your money,” said Eugene.
They had reached the corner by the Bank, and now halted, indecisively, looking up the cool gulch of afternoon. The street buzzed with a light gay swarm of idlers: the faces of the virgins bloomed in and out like petals on a bough. Advancing upon him, an inch to the second, Eugene saw, ten feet away, the heavy paralyzed body of old Mr. Avery. He was a very great scholar, stone-deaf, and seventy-eight years old. He lived alone in a room above the Public Library. He had neither friends nor connections. He was a myth.
“Oh, my God!” said Eugene. “Here he comes!”
It was too late for escape.
Gasping a welcome, Mr. Avery bore down on him, with a violent shuffle of his feet and a palsied tattoo of his heavy stick which brought him over the intervening three yards in forty seconds.
“Well, young fellow,” he panted, “how’s Latin?”
“Fine,” Eugene screamed into his pink ear.
“Poeta nascitur, non fit,” said Mr. Avery, and went off into a silent wheeze of laughter which brought on a fit of coughing strangulation. His eyes bulged, his tender pink skin grew crimson, he roared his terror out in a phlegmy rattle, while his goose-white hand trembled frantically for his handkerchief. A crowd gathered. Eugene quickly drew a dirty handkerchief from the old man’s pocket, and thrust it into his hands. He tore up from his convulsed organs a rotting mass, and panted rapidly for breath. The crowd dispersed somewhat dejectedly.
George Graves grinned darkly. “That’s too bad,” he said. “You oughtn’t to laugh,’Gene.” He turned away, gurgling.
“Can you conjugate?” gasped Mr. Avery. "Here’s the way I learned:
"Amo, amas, I love a lass. Amat, He loves her, too."
