"Do you attempt to assert that the difference between night and dawn can be detected by the dull besotted perception of the peasantry?" "I love you too," said Ben. "Ah! In lieu of morning prayers let us contemplate Pontifex." "Law, why that, on a spring morning?" "He hath been subjected to experiment and found wanting." "How's that?" "The verb, boy. Consider, it was the doom of Pontifex to _read_ all those twice five copies. Well, sir, in one of 'em, taking not even you into my confidence, I inserted one error, a miserable crawling misplaced accent--a wee louse, do you see, nibbling the fair white integument of a Greek verb. Did he discover, percontate and make manifest this crapulent, this obscene and overweening impudicity? Damn, I forgot concupiscent. Did he find this adventitious louse to be a concupiscent intrusion upon the fulgurant purity of grammatical impeccancy, and crack the hereinbeforementioned louse upon that sable thumbnail? Nah. By the way, where'd the bloody pot get to this time?" "Under _your_ bed," said Ben, exasperated, for the Cyprian fantasy had not completely dissolved, and it did seem too bad that the last of it must be dismissed by the unequivocal din of urination. "There!" Reuben sighed. "I have subsumed the concupiscent." He stooped to pat the floor a few times with the flat of his hands, and sprawled back on his bed. "With reference, sir, to that Cicero whose lank shadow falleth across our afternoon: _Sunt autem qui dicant foedus esse quoddam sapientius ut ne minos amicos quam se ipsos diligant._ Do you understumble me, sir?" "Please, sir, no, sir." "I freely render: Some say there's a kind of compact of the wise, to love their friends no less than themselves. You may construe." "Please, sir, no, sir, I won't, sir." "You what or that which, sir?" Ben snatched for his brother's sleep-tangled hair. Reuben caught his hand palm to palm and braced his elbow, stretching out wiry and tense. "Wrastle then," he said, not smiling. Ben knew that with his feet firm on the floor he could hardly fail to force Reuben's hand back, though the boy did possess uncommon strength in his thin arms. Ben recalled he had won last time; not wishing to win twice running, he allowed his hand to sink slowly, as their eyes locked too, Reuben's grave and dilated. Ben drove the smaller hand up once or twice, catching then a glimpse of panic in Reuben, but Reuben clamped his mouth tight and heaved, the power of his knotting arm increased unreasonably, and Ben was startled to find his own arm wavering down. No need after all to simulate defeat; it was fairly done. Ben slumped on the floor laughing and rubbing his shoulder. He thought of telling Reuben that he meant to go into Boston today, Hibbs or no Hibbs. "Ru, you could strangle a bull."