“Did I hear ye open the book?” said old man McCree. “Many and weary be the months since my lad has read it to me. I dinno; but I took a great likings to them Greeks. Ye left off at a place. ’Tis a fine day outside, lad. Be out and take rest from your work. I have gotten used to me chair by the windy and me pipe.”
“Pel-Peloponnesus was the place where we left off, and not hippopotamus,” said Danny. “The war began there. It kept something doing for thirty years. The headlines says that a guy named Philip of Macedon, in 338 B. C., got to be boss of Greece by getting the decision at the battle of Cher-Cheronæa. I’ll read it.”
With his hand to his ear, rapt in the Peloponnesian War, old man McCree sat for an hour, listening.
Then he got up and felt his way to the door of the kitchen. Mrs. McCree was slicing cold meat. She looked up. Tears were running from old man McCree’s eyes.
“Do ye hear our lad readin’ to me?” he said. “There is none finer in the land. My two eyes have come back to me again.”
After supper he said to Danny: “’Tis a happy day, this Easter. And now ye will be off to see Katy in the evening. Well enough.”
“Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?” said Danny, angrily. “Have I no right
