mus Holiday, come and speak to mon, and please you.”
“Favete linguis,” answered a voice from within; “I cannot now come forth, Gammer Sludge, being in the very sweetest bit of my morning studies.”
“Nay, but, good now, Master Holiday, come ye out, do ye—Here’s a mon would to Wayland Smith, and I care not to show him way to devil—his horse hath cast shoe.”
“Quid mihi cum caballo?” replied the man of learning from within; “I think there is but one wise man in the hundred, and they cannot shoe a horse without him!”
And forth came the honest pedagogue, for such his dress bespoke him. A long, lean, shambling, stooping figure, was surmounted by a head thatched with lank black hair somewhat inclining to grey. His features had the cast of habitual authority, which I suppose Dionysius carried with him from the throne to the schoolmaster’s pulpit, and bequeathed as a legacy to all of the same profession. A black buckram cassock was gathered at his middle with a belt, at which hung, instead of knife or weapon, a goodly leathern pen-and-ink-case. His ferula was stuck on the other side, like Harlequin’s wooden sword; and he carried in his hand the tattered volume which he had been busily perusing.
On seeing a person of Tressilian’s appearance, which he was better able to estimate than the country folks had been, the schoolmaster unbonneted, and accosted him with, “Salve, domine. Intelligisne linguam Latinam?”
