“It might easily be grandpapa’s then,” said Miss Sparling, caressing the book in what Mr. Carton thought an unusually intelligent way for a woman. “He loved Fluvius Minucius. He often talked to me about him.”
“It’s a queer thing,” said Mr. Carton, who had a curious and unaccountable feeling that Miss Sparling had suddenly become a person he had never seen, a person who, if of the opposite s*x, would not be amiss in a common-room, “that no one has devoted much attention to Minucius since Slawkenbergius’s time. Possibly your grandfather intended to work on him.”
“Indeed he did,” said Miss Sparling. “We had made a great many notes. I used to be his secretary in the holidays.”
And that, Mr. Carton thought, possibly accounts for your being so at home with an unknown late Latin poet.
“I can
