`Yes,' said Philip, smiling.`I've been taught Latin and Greek and mathematics...
and writing and such things.'
`O but, I say, you don't like Latin though do you?' said Tom, lowering his voice confidentially.
`Pretty well - I don't care much about it,' said Philip.
`Ah, but perhaps you haven't got into the Propiae quae maribus ,'
said Tom, nodding his head sideways, as much as to say, `that was the test:
it was easy talking until you came to that.'
Philip felt some bitter complacency in the promising stupidity of this well-made active-looking boy; but made polite by his own extreme sensitiveness as well as by his desire to conciliate, he checked his inclination to laugh, and said quietly, `I've done with the grammar: I don't learn that any more.'
`Then you won't have the same lessons as I shall,' said Tom, with a sense of disappointment.
`No; but I daresay I can help you.I shall be very glad to help you if I can.'
Tom did not say `Thank You,' for he was quite absorbed in the thought that Wakem's son did not seem so spiteful a fellow as might have been expected.
`I say,' he said presently, `do you love your father?'
`Yes,' said Philip, colouring deeply, `don't you love yours?'
`O yes...I only wanted to know,' said Tom, rather ashamed of himself now he saw Philip colouring and looking uncomfortable.He found much difficulty in adjusting his attitude of mind towards the son of Lawyer Wakem, and it had occurred to him that if Philip disliked his father, that fact might go some way towards clearing up his perplexity.
`Shall you learn drawing now?' he said, by way of changing the subject.
`No', said Philip.`My father wishes me to give all my time to other things now.'
`What Latin, and Euclid, and those things?' said Tom.
`Yes,' said Philip, who had left off using his pencil and was resting his head on one hand, while Tom was leaning forward on both elbows, and looking with increasing admiration at the dog and the donkey.
`And you don't mind that?' said Tom, with strong curiosity.
`No: I like to know what everybody else knows.I can study what I like by and by.'
`I can't think why anybody should learn Latin,' said Tom.`It's no good.'
`It's part of the education of a gentleman,' said Philip.`All gentlemen learn the same things.'
`What, do you think Sir John Crake, the master of the harriers, knows Latin?' said Tom, who had often thought he should like to resemble Sir John Crake.
`He learnt it when he was a boy, of course,' said Philip `But I dare say he's forgotten it.'
`O, well, I can do that, then,' said Tom, not with any epigrammatic intention, but with serious satisfaction at the idea that as far as Latin was concerned, there was no hindrance to his resembling Sir John Crake.
`Only you're obliged to remember it while you're at school, else you've got to learn ever so many lines of `Speaker' Mr Stelling's very particular - did you know? He'll have you up ten times if you say "nam" for "jam"...
he won't let you go a letter wrong, I can tell you.'