looking into it
these last few days.«
    »Well?«
    Jacob had a comical look of perplexity and indignation. He thumped the
table.
    »Do you mean to tell me that's the kind of stuff boys are set to learn at
school?«
    »A good deal of it comes in.«
    »Then all I can say is, no wonder the colleges turn out such a lot of young
blackguards. Why, man, I could scarcely believe my eyes! You mean to say that,
if I'd had a son, he'd have been brought up on that kind of literature, and
without me knowing anything about it? Why, I've locked the book up; I was
ashamed to let it lay on the table.«
    »It's the old Lemprière, I suppose,« said Spence, vastly amused. »The new
dictionaries are toned down a good deal; they weren't so squeamish in the old
days.«
    »But the lads still read the books these things come out of, eh?«
    »Oh yes. It has always been one of the most laughable inconsistencies in
English morality. Anything you could find in the dictionary is milk for babes
compared with several Greek plays that have to be read for examinations.«
    »It fair caps me, Spence! Classical education that is, eh? That's what
parsons are bred on? And, by the Lord, you say they're beginning it with girls?«
    »Very zealously.«
    »Nay -!«
    Jacob threw up his arms, and abandoned the effort to express himself.
    Later, when the guests were gone, Spence remembered this, and, to Eleanor's
surprise, he broke into uproarious laughter.
    »One of the best jokes I ever heard! A fresh, first-hand judgment on the
morality of the Classics by a plain-minded English man of business.« He told the
story. »And Bradshaw's perfectly right; that's the best of it.«
 

                                  Chapter III

                      The Boarding-House on the Mergellina

The year was 1878. A tourist searching his Baedeker for a genteel but not
oppressively aristocratic pension in the open parts of Naples would have found
himself directed by an asterisk to the establishment kept by Mrs. Gluck on the
Mergellina; - frequented by English and Germans, and very comfortable. The
recommendation was a just one. Mrs. Gluck enjoyed the advantage of having lived
as many years in England as she had in Germany; her predilections leaned, if
anything, to the English side