So at last I
introduced myself. Then he jumped up and grasped my hands, and stared
and blushed and laughed, and began a dozen random questions, ending with
a demand as to how in the world I had known him.
"Why, you are not changed so utterly," I said; "and after all, it's but
fifteen years since you used to do my Latin exercises for me."
"Not changed, eh?" he answered, still smiling, and yet speaking with a
sort of ingenuous dismay.
Then I remembered that poor Pickering had been, in those Latin days, a
victim of juvenile irony. He used to bring a bottle of medicine to
school and take a dose in a glass of water before lunch; and every day at
two o'clock, half an hour before the rest of us were liberated, an old
nurse with bushy eyebrows came and fetched him away in a carriage. His
extremely fair complexion, his nurse, and his bottle of medicine, which
suggested a vague analogy with the sleeping-potion in the tragedy, caused
him to be called Juliet. Certainly Romeo's sweetheart hardly suffered
more; she was not, at least, a standing joke in Verona. Remembering
these things, I hastened to say to Pickering that I hoped he was still
the same good fellow who used to do my Latin for me. "We were capital
friends, you know," I went on, "then and afterwards.
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