Part 14 (1/2)
was never displayed on his way to the recitation building), and now it was his own boy who was sharing in the life of old Winthrop and doubtless he himself was in the minds of the young students relegated to that remote and distant period when the ”old grads” were supposed to be young. Doubtless to them it was a time as remote as that when Homer's heroes contended in battle or the fauns and satyrs peopled the wooded hills and plains. And yet how vital it all was to him. He watched the groups of students moving across the campus, and as the sound of their shouts or laughter or the words of some song rose on the autumn air, it seemed to the man that he needed only to close his eyes and the old life would return--a life so like the present that it did not seem possible that a great gulf of thirty years lay between.
Mr. Phelps' meditations were interrupted by the entrance of Will, who burst into the room with the force of a small whirlwind.
”Here I am, pop!” he exclaimed as he tossed his books upon his couch and threw his cap to the opposite side of the room. ”Old Splinter stuck me good this morning, but I can stand it as long as you are here.”
”Who is Splinter?”
”Why, don't you know? I thought everybody knew Splinter. He's our professor of Greek and the biggest fraud in the whole faculty.”
”What's the trouble with him?” Mr. Phelps spoke quietly but there was something in his voice that betrayed a deeper feeling and one that Will was quick to perceive and that gave him a twinge of uneasiness as well.
”Oh, he's hard as nails. He must have 'ichor' in his veins, not blood. I don't believe he ever was a boy. He must have been like Pallas Athenae.
Wasn't she the lady that sprang full-fledged from the brain of Zeus?
Well, I've a notion that Splinter yelled in Greek when he was a baby.
That is, if he ever was an infant, and called for his bottle in dactylic hexameter. Oh, I know lots about Greek, pop,” laughed Will as his father smiled. ”I know the alphabet and a whole lot of things even if Splinter thinks I don't.”
”Doesn't he think you know much about your Greek?”
”Well, he doesn't seem to be overburdened with the weight of his opinion of me. He just looks upon me, I'm afraid, as if I was not a bright and s.h.i.+ning light. 'Learn Greek or grow up in ignorance,' that's the burden of his song, and I've sometimes thought that about all the fun he has in life is flunking freshmen.”
”How about the freshmen?”
”You mean me? Honestly, pop, I haven't done very well in my Greek; but I don't think it's all my fault. I've worked on it as I haven't worked on anything else in college. I've done my part, but Splinter doesn't seem to believe it. What am I going to do about it?”
Will in spite of his light-hearted ways, was seriously troubled and his father was silent for a brief time before he responded to the boy's question.
CHAPTER XI
THE PERPETUAL PROBLEM
”I was aware that you were having trouble with your Greek,” said Mr.
Phelps quietly, ”and that was one of my reasons for stopping over here.”
”You were? How did you know?”
”I had received word from the secretary of the faculty. He sent me a formal note announcing that your work was so low that it was more than probable you would fail in your mid-year examination.”
For a moment Will Phelps was silent. His face became colorless and his heart seemed almost to rise in his throat. Fail in his mid-year's? A ”warning” sent home to his father? To the inexperienced young student it seemed for a moment as if he was disgraced in the eyes of all his friends. He knew that his work had been of a low grade, but never for a moment had he considered it as being at all serious. So many of his newly formed friends in the college had been speaking of their conditions and low grades as a matter of course and had referred to them laughingly, much as if they were good jokes to be enjoyed that Will too had come almost to feel that his own trouble was not a serious one. And Splinter was the one to be blamed for the most of it, he was convinced.
The words of his father, however, had presented the matter in an entirely different light, and his trouble was vastly increased by its evident effect upon him. Will's face was drawn and there was an expression of suffering upon it as he glanced again at his father and said:
”What shall I do? Will it drop me out of college?”
”I think not necessarily. You must pa.s.s off more than half your hours to enable you to keep on with your cla.s.s; but failure in one study will not bring that of itself, for your Greek is a four-hour course. But the matter is, of course, somewhat serious and in more ways than one.”
”Yes, I know it,” replied Will despondently.
”Well, if you know it, that's half the battle won already. The greatest trouble with most unsuccessful men is that they have never learned what their own weaknesses and limitations are. But you say you know, and I wish you'd tell me what you think the chief difficulty is.”