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"Go and ask him"

Simmons went, and came back triumphantly "I tole hiht"

The visitor went ponderously up-stairs On the first landing he caught

his breath, and stood still

Directly opposite him, across theof the upper hall was a

horsehair-covered sofa, with great, shiny, slippery ht put his hand up to his throat as if he were

s He used to lie on that sofa on hot afternoons and study

his declensions It had no springs; he felt the hardness of it in his

bones, now, and the scratch of the horsehair on his cheek Instantly

words, forgotten for a generation, leaped up: Stella Stellae Stellae Stellam-Mechanically his eyes turned to the side wall; an old secretary stood

there, its glass doors curtained within by faded red rep He had kept

his fishing-tackle in its old cupboard; the book of flies was in a

green box on the second shelf, at the left Samuel looked at those

curtained doors, and at the shabby case of drawers below them where

the veneer had peeled and blistered under the hot sun of long

afternoons, and the sudden surge of youth into his dry,not hi, each step creaking under his heavy