This Thursday morning spring was assailing the house with lazy reminders, a ripple of breeze at the window Mr. Hibbs had sternly closed, a muted hammering from the shed where Rob Grimes was mending a chicken coop at great leisure; earlier Reuben had heard the lonesome Sundayish clamor of the meeting-house bell nearly a mile away, warning that Thursday was Lecture Day, when decent citizens take thought for their souls. "Very well, Reuben." Mr. Hibbs sniffed. "Lines twenty-one and twenty-two, and pray note that you are not to stress the caesura in line twenty-two, seeing there is no break in the thought." "quid fuit, ut tutas agitaret Daedalus alas, Icarus immensas...." "What's the matter? Are you considering, Mr. Cory, whether the caesura be intended by the poet to indicate a pause for daydreaming?" "Icarus immensas nomine signet aquas." "You have the quantities correct, and may now construe." "'Why should Daedalus have----'" "'Should'? 'Should'? I see no subjunctive, Mr. Cory." "I was construing freely, sir." "Why?" "I thought it sounded smoother so, in English." "Fiddle! _Fuit_, not being subjunctive, cannot be so translated." "'Why was it that Daedalus safely moved his wings----'" "Mr. Cory, one light fugitive moment if you please. Concerning the word _tutas_: is this an adverb?" "No, sir." "If Ovid had wished an adverb he would have written----?" "_Tuto_, sir." "Yet he used this strange word _tutas_, which is----?" "An adjective, sir. _Tutas_, _-a_, _-um_, meaning 'safe.'" "Light breaks." Mr. Hibbs filled his clay pipe, deliberately maddening his tortured nose. "The source, incidentally, of a dreadful English word, 'tutor'--I suppose from some woeful misguided conceit to the effect that a tutor can hold his charges in safety, Master Reuben, from the perils of error--_wharrmphsh!_--within and without. An adjective, then, and plural, I presume. The case, Mr. Cory?" "Objective, Mr. Hibbs." "Could it by any remote chance agree with--hm----" "It agrees with _alas_, sir." "Oh! How we do see eye to eye at times! _Tutas alas._ I could even imagine it meant 'safe wings,' 'uninjured wings,' something like that, if an adverb had not gone flying past my aging benighted head. Now concerning this word _agitaret_. Did I hear you translate it as 'moved'?" "I did, sir." "Had you considered the word 'agitate'?--excellent, _I_ should have thought, and taken direct from the mother Latin." "I did, sir, but the present-day meaning seemed unsatisfactory." "Why?"