"
"Who's Mr. Redgrave?"
"The Vicar."
"A bit independent?" said my uncle, briskly.
"Disobedient," said my mother. "He has no idea of his place. He seems to
think he can get on by slighting people and flouting them. He'll learn
perhaps before it is too late."
My uncle stroked his cut chin and me. "Have you learnt any Latin?" he
asked abruptly.
I said I had not.
"He'll have to learn a little Latin," he explained to my mother,
"to qualify. H'm. He could go down to the chap at the grammar school
here--it's just been routed into existence again by the Charity
Commissioners and have lessons."
"What, me learn Latin!" I cried, with emotion.
"A little," he said.
"I've always wanted" I said and; "LATIN!"
I had long been obsessed by the idea that having no Latin was a
disadvantage in the world, and Archie Garvell had driven the point of
this pretty earnestly home. The literature I had read at Bladesover had
all tended that way. Latin had had a quality of emancipation for me that
I find it difficult to convey. And suddenly, when I had supposed all
learning was at an end for me, I heard this!
"It's no good to you, of course," said my uncle, "except to pass exams
with, but there you are!"
"You'll have to learn Latin because you have to learn Latin," said my
mother, "not because you want to.
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