‘Dis te minorem quod geris imperas,’ King quoted presently.  ’It is necessary to bear oneself as lower than the local gods—­even than drawing-masters who are precluded from effective retaliation.  I do wish you’d tried that mouse-game with me, Pater.’

Winton grinned; then sobered ’It was a cad’s trick, sir, to play on Mr. Lidgett.’  He peered forward at the page he was copying.

‘Well, “the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost”—­’ King stopped himself.  ’Why do you goggle like an owl?  Hand me the Mantuan and I’ll dictate.  No matter.  Any rich Virgilian measures will serve.  I may peradventure recall a few.’  He began: 

     ’Tu regere imperio populos Romane memento
     Hae tibi erunt artes pacisque imponere morem,
     Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.

There you have it all, Winton.  Write that out twice and yet once again.’

For the next forty minutes, with never a glance at the book, King paid out the glorious hexameters (and King could read Latin as though it were alive), Winton hauling them in and coiling them away behind him as trimmers in a telegraph-ship’s hold coil away deep-sea cable.  King broke from the Aeneid to the Georgics and back again, pausing now and then to translate some specially loved line or to dwell on the treble-shot texture of the ancient fabric.  He did not allude to the coming interview with Mullins except at the last, when he said, ’I think at this juncture, Pater, I need not ask you for the precise significance of atqui sciebat quae sibi barbarus tortor.’

The ungrateful Winton flushed angrily, and King loafed out to take five o’clock call-over, after which he invited little Hartopp to tea and a talk on chlorine-gas.  Hartopp accepted the challenge like a bantam, and the two went up to King’s study about the same time as Winton returned to the form-room beneath it to finish his lines.

Then half a dozen of the Second Fifteen, who should have been washing, strolled in to condole with ‘Pater’ Winton, whose misfortune and its consequences were common talk.  No one was more sincere than the long, red-headed, knotty-knuckled ‘Paddy’ Vernon, but, being a careless animal, he joggled Winton’s desk.

‘Curse you for a silly ass!’ said Winton.  ‘Don’t do that.’

No one is expected to be polite while under punishment, so Vernon, sinking his sub-prefectship, replied peacefully enough: 

‘Well, don’t be wrathy, Pater.’

‘I’m not,’ said Winton.  ‘Get out!  This ain’t your House form-room.’

‘’Form-room don’t belong to you.  Why don’t you go to your own study?’ Vernon replied.

‘Because Mullins is there waitin’ for the victim,’ said Stalky delicately, and they all laughed.  ’You ought to have shaken that mouse out of your trouser-leg, Pater.  That’s the way I did in my youth.  Pater’s revertin’ to his second childhood.  Never mind, Pater, we all respect you and your future caree-ah.’