"Pocket her, then," said Sir William, hastily. "Who gave you leave to pouch my ferrets? Eh? What has a ferret to do in school? Eh? Idle again? Captain Butler, is he idle?" "He is a dunce," said Mr. Butler, with a shrug. "Dunce!" echoed Sir William, quickly. "Why should he be a dunce when I have taught him? Granted his Latin would shame a French priest, and his mathematics sicken a Mohawk, have I not read the poets with him?" Mr. Butler, a gentleman and an officer of rank and fortune, whose degraded whims led him now to instruct youth as a pastime, sharpened a quill in silence. "Gad," muttered Sir William, "have I not read mythology with him till I dreamed of nymphs and satyrs and capered in my dreams till Mistress Molly--but that's neither here nor there. Micky!" "Sir," I replied, sulkily. Then he began to question me concerning certain gods and demi-gods, and I gaped and floundered as though I were no better than the inky rabble ruled over by Mr. Butler. Sir William lounged by the window in his spurred boots and scarlet hunting-coat, and smelling foul of the kennels, which, God knows, I do not find unpleasant; and at every slap of the whip over his boots, he shot me through and through with a question which I had neither information nor inclination to answer before the grinning small fry. Now to be hectored and questioned by Sir William like a sniffling lad with one eye on the birch and the other on Mr. Butler, did not please me. Moreover, the others were looking on--Esk with ink on his nose, Peter in tears, a-licking his lump of spruce, and that wild-cat thing, Silver Heels-- With every question of Sir William I felt I was losing caste among them. Besides, there was Mr. Butler with his silent, deathly laugh--a laugh that never reached his eyes--yellow, changeless eyes, round as a bird's. Slap came the whip on the polished boot-tops, and Sir William was at it again with his gods and goddesses: "Who carried off Proserpine? Eh?" I looked sullenly at Esk, then at Peter, who put out his tongue at me. I had little knowledge of mythology beyond what concerned that long-legged goddess who loved hunting--as I did. "Who carried off Proserpine?" repeated Sir William. "Come now, you should know that; come now--a likely lass, Proserpine, out in the bush pulling cowslips, bless her little fingers--when--ho!--up pops--eh?--who, lad, who in Heaven's name?" "Plato!" I muttered at hazard. "What!" bawled Sir William. I felt for my underlip and got it between my teeth, and for a space not another word would I speak, although that hollow roar began to sound in Sir William's voice which always meant a scene. His whip, too, went slap-slap! on his boots, like the tail of a big dog rapping its ribs.