don’t you make an effort? Why don’t you buckle down and really study, after this?”
Eugene stared at the man, with tears of anger in his eyes. He sputtered but could not speak. But suddenly, as he looked down into the knowing leer, the perfect and preposterous injustice of the thing—like a caricature—overcame him: he burst into an explosive laugh of rage and amusement which the teacher, no doubt, accepted as confession.
“Well, what do you say?” he asked. “Will you try?”
“All right! Yes!” the boy yelled. “I’ll try it.”
He bought at once a copy of the translation used by the class. Thereafter, when he read, faltering prettily here and there over a phrase, until his instructor should come to his aid, the satanic professor listened gravely and attentively, nodding his head in approval from time to time, and saying, with great satisfaction, when he had finished: “Good, Mr. Gant. Very good. That shows what a little real work will do.”
And privately, he would say: “You see the difference, don’t you? I knew at once when you stopped using that pony. Your translation is not so smooth, but it’s your own now. You’re doing good work, my boy, and you’re getting something out of it. It’s worth it, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Eugene gratefully, “it certainly is—”
By far the most distinguished of his teachers this first year was Mr. Edward Pettigrew (“Buck”) Benson, the Greek professor. Buck Benson was a little man in the middle-forties, a bachelor, somewhat dandified, but old-fashioned, in his dress. He wore wing collars, large plump cravats, and suede-topped shoes. His hair was thick, heavily grayed, beautifully kept. His face was courteously pugnacious, fierce, with large yellow bulging eyeballs, and several bulldog pleatings around the mouth. It was an altogether handsome ugliness.
His voice was low, lazy, pleasant, with an indolent drawl, but without changing its pace or its inflection he could flay a victim with as cruel a tongue as ever wagged, and in the next moment wipe out hostility, restore affection, heal all wounds by the same agency. His charm was enormous. Among the students he was the subject for comical speculation—in their myths, they made of
