“I knew I could get a tutor, and if it is necessary I’ll do it.  But I did not know but that you might be able to make a suggestion to me.  I know I’m not very well prepared, but if you’ll give me a show and tell me a little how to go to work at the detestable stuff I’ll do my best.  I don’t like it.  I wouldn’t keep at it a minute if my father was not so anxious for me to keep it up and I’d do anything in the world for him.  That’s why I’m in the Greek class.”

“You are, I fancy (fawncy was the word in the dialect of the professor) doing better work in the various other departments than in your Greek?”

“Yes, sir.  I think so.”

“You are not positive?”

“Yes, sir.  I know I’m doing fairly well in my Latin and mathematics.  Why the recitation in Latin never seems to be more than a quarter of an hour, while the Greek seems as if it would never come to an end.  I think Professor Baxter is the best teacher I ever saw and he doesn’t make the Latin seem a bit like a dead language.  But the Greek seems as if it had never been alive.”

“Ahem-m!” piped up the thin voice of the professor of Greek.

Will Phelps, however, was in earnest now and his embarrassment was all forgotten.  He was expressing his own inward feelings and without any intention or even thought of how the words would sound he was describing his own attitude of mind.  He certainly had no thought of how his words would be received.

“Ahem-m!” repeated the professor shrilly and shifting a trifle uneasily in his seat.  “I fawncy that a student always does better work in a subject which he enjoys.”

“Yes, but doesn’t he enjoy what he can do better work in too?  Now I don’t know how to study Greek, can’t seem to make anything out of it.  As you told me one day in the class ‘I make Greek of it all.’  Perhaps not exactly the kind of Greek you want, though,” Will added with a smile.

“Ah, yes.  I fawncy a trifle more of work would aid you.”

“Of course!  I know it would!  And that’s what I’m willing to do and what I want to do, professor.  But the trouble is I don’t know just how to work.”

“I—­I fail to see precisely what you mean.”

“Why, I spend time enough but I don’t seem to ’get there’—­I mean I don’t seem to accomplish much.  My translation’s not much good, and everything is wrong.”

“Perhaps you have an innate deficiency—­”

“You mean I’m a fool?” Will laughed good-naturedly, and even the professor smiled.

“Ah, no.  By no means, Mr. Phelps, quite the contrary to that, I assure you.  There are some men who are very brilliant students in certain subjects, but are very indifferent ones in others.  For example, I recollect that some twenty years ago—­or to be exact nineteen years ago—­there was a student in my classes who was very brilliant, very brilliant indeed.  His name as I recall it was Wilder.  So proficient was he in his Greek that some of the students facetiously called him Socrates, and some still more facetious even termed him Soc.  I am sure, Mr. Phelps, you have been in college a sufficient length of time to apprehend the frolicsome nature of some of the students here.”