ROBIN LINNET
:: :: By E. F. Benson :: ::
:: :: Author of “Dodo,” “Up and Down,” etc. :: ::
LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.
:: :: PATERNOSTER ROW :: ::
| CHAPTER I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII. |
ROBIN LINNET
CHAPTER I
DAMON and Pythias, collegiately and colloquially known as Day and Pie,were seated in Damon’s room in the great quadrangle, on two chairs, sideby side, with a candle on the table that guttered in the draught, and acopy of “Socrates’s Apology” (in the original Greek) between them.Between them also, propped up against the candle, was a firmly literaltranslation of what they were reading, to which they both constantlyreferred. Underneath the candlestick in a far less accessible position,since they desired to consult it much less frequently, was a Greeklexicon. First one of them translated a few lines, with an eye fixed onthe English equivalent, and then the other. That was a more sociable wayof working than to sit separate and borrow the crib from each other.Besides, there was only one candle, stolen from another fellow’s room,as the electric light had, half an hour ago, got tired and gone tosleep. The books, therefore, had to be centrally situated in this smallfield of imperfect illumination.
They had got to the point where Socrates, having been warned to preparefor the administration of the{6} cup of hemlock at sundown, had sent forhis wife, Xantippe, and his children. But she had made sounphilosophical a howling and feminine outcry that he had sent hisfamily away, and proceeded to spend his last hour in the company of hisfriends.
Damon paused—he was translating at the moment—and lit a pipe, whilePythias relaxed his attitude of polite attention.
“I vote we stop,” he said. “Socrates was evidently jolly sick of it alland wanted to stop, too. It wouldn’t do to fly in the face of Socrates.Whisky?”
Pythias shut the translation up in the original text.
“I’m not by way of drinking whisky,” he said, “but if you’ve got someice and soda-water——”
“Which you ordered for me, and put down to my account——” continuedDamon.
“So I did. In that case I don’t mind for once: I think I should ratherlike it. It tastes beastly, but on the other hand, I drink it not forwhat it is, but for what it does. And I’