to-night. I'll touch it up after prayers, and let you have it in time to make a clean copy before ten, and Heriot'll sign it after prayers in the morning."
And he put that copy in his pocket as the sentinel in the passage flew in with his sepulchral "Hush!"
By gulping down his milk and taking his dog-rock with him to his study, Carpenter was able to devote a good half-hour to Jan's verses and still give Jan ten minutes to copy out the revised version; the ten minutes was ample, but the half-hour was all too short. The very first line began with a false quantity, and ended with a grammatical blunder. Carpenter rectified the false quantity by a simple transposition, and made so bold as to substitute perisse for moriri at the end of the hexameter. The second half of the pentameter was hopeless: Chips fell back on his own, merely changing causa doloris to fletus acerbus, and plumed himself on his facility. But in the second couplet every other foot was a flogging matter if Jan got sent up.
"I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky."
Chips loved the lines well enough to blush for his own respectable attempt at a Latin rendering; but his blood ran cold at Jan's—
"Flevi quum memini nostro quam sæpe loquendo
Defessum Phcœbum fecimus ire domum."
He flung himself on the monstrosity, but had to leave it at —
"Cum lacrymis memini nostro quam sæpe loquendo
Defessum Phcœbum fessus adisset aquas."
Chips did not plume himself on this; but at any rate nostro loquendo was Jan's own gem, and just bad enough to distract attention from the suspicious superiority of the rest without invoking the direst consequences. This was
