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“I do, but I haven’t read very much.”

“Well, now’s your chance,” the Professor pointed out. "I was going to ask you, now you’re fit for it, if you wouldn’t like some books up here. What do you like?—history? travels? biography?”

“History, please. And biography. And———” (He was tremendously shy about this, and did not quite know how to put it.)

“Yes? What else?”

“I would like—have you any books of plays and that sort of thing—not prose exactly, you know.”

“Poetry? Why yes—what about Shakespeare?—would you like him?”

“Yes, I think so. I’ve only read two—King Lear and The Tempest.”

“Well, you’ve struck two of the best,” said the Professor, “but you may as well have the others too. I’ll look around and see what I can find that I think you’d like, and you shall read all you want to.”

But it was a slightly surprised Professor who returned to his wife a little later.

“What do you think the little beggar wants to read, Alison? Poetry, if you please! Take him up the little Shakespeares to-morrow—they’re light to hold.”

“Didn’t I always say he was an interesting boy, Winthrop?” cried Alison, delighted.

“I’m not dreaming of contradicting you, my dear,” said the Professor, kissing his wife’s flushed cheek. “I shall be able to try my lectures on him presently. He reads French too,” he added. “Does that surprise you?”

“French! Why, he looks French himself, Winthrop. And his name is, of course.”

“He calls himself Saint Croy,” remarked the Professor.

“That needn’t mean anything. Did you ask him about his people?”