won her confidence at once, and it was a joy to me to see him and my mother so completely at home with each other. She had wondered what to make ready for breakfast, but I had assured her that he was not 'faddy' about his food, and that she need have no misgivings about his enjoying the customary fare of her table. So she had made him a fine ashetful of our own favourite Sunday-morning dish, to wit, ham, eggs, sausage, and haddock, with home-baked scones and oat-cake. He enjoyed the menu greatly, and said so (I should hardly have forgiven him if he hadn't!), and, his appetite being keen after the long train journey and the morning walk, he ate quite heartily, which rejoiced her heart. He chatted freely, but not obtrusively, keeping his conversation upon topics likely to be of common interest round the table. Learning that my mother knew Gaelic, he asked her about the West Highland pronunciation of certain words that had a common Gaelic and Latin root, and he told my sisters about some of the curious domestic customs in Iceland which he had observed during his visit to that country a dozen or so years previously.
After breakfast I sat with him in the front room, he meanwhile drawing from his 'haversack' an Odyssey and a Greek lexicon preparatory to his daily task of translation. He had much delight in the Odyssey, because it afforded so many glimpses into the everyday life and feeling of the Ionic people; many of the incidents and customs in the poem were remarkably akin to those described in the Norse Sagas.
I left him in the room by himself at his Odyssey, while I went over to Glasgow Green to take part in our usual Sunday morning open-air meeting of the League. He offered to accompany me, but I knew he was pressed to get on with his Odyssey translation, and assured him that our comrades would feel that he had done his duty amply by them if, in addition to giving his evening lecture, he turned up at our afternoon meeting and said a few words.
On my return I found him chatting with James Mayor
