single one of her sisterhood impregnable?" replied "_C'est selon_." He
often used to astonish my weak mind by his observations on this head. I
did not know till afterward that Sir Henry Fallowfield, the Bassompierre
of his day, came for the Christmas pheasant-shooting every year into
Guy's neighborhood, and that he had already imbibed lessons of
questionable morality, sitting at the gouty feet of that evil Gamaliel.

He spoke of and to women of every class readily whenever he got the
chance, always with perfect _aplomb_ and self-possession; and I have
heard older men remark since, that in him it did not appear the
precocity of "the rising generation," but rather the confidence of one
who knew his subject well. Perhaps the fact of his father having died
when he was an infant, and his having always been suzerain among his
women at home, may have had something to do with this. An absurd
instance of what I have been saying happened just before Guy left.

By time-honored custom, four or five of the Sixth were invited every
week to dine with the head master. They were not, strictly speaking,
convivial, those solemn banquets; where the host was condescendingly
affable, and his guests cheerful, as it were, under protest; resembling
somewhat the entertainments in the captain's cabin, where the chief is
unpopular.

Our Archididascalus was a kind-hearted, honest man, albeit, by virtue
of his office, somewhat strict and stern. You could read the
_Categories_ in the wrinkles of his colorless face, and contested
passages of Thucydides in the crows'-feet round his eyes. The
everlasting grind at the educational tread-mill had worn away all he
might once have had of imagination; he translated with precisely the
same intonations the Tusculan _Disputations_ and--_Erôs anikate machan._