"Have you got an encyclopedia?" inquired the visitor, his gaze, from behind the big, round lenses of his spectacles, roaming inquiringly about the room.
"No, I haven't," answered Ira. "At least, only a small, one-volume one. I'm afraid it wouldn't be of much use to you. I usually go over to the library."
The visitor nodded. "Yes, you can do that." He rubbed his chin reflectively with long, thin fingers and observed Ira dubiously. He was quite the tallest youth Ira had ever seen, and he was as thin and angular as he was tall. He had brown hair, which was worn rather too long and which looked sadly in need of brushing, grey eyes, a very sharp nose, a wide, thin mouth and a chin that came almost to a point. He looked to Ira as if he needed a square meal, or, rather, a whole series of square meals, for his face was as narrow as his body and his queer, nondescript clothes hung about him as though they had been fashioned at some far-distant time when he had weighed about three times his present weight. His coat was a plaid lounging jacket from which depended by a few threads one remaining frog. The corresponding button had followed its companions into oblivion. His trousers were of grey flannel and his feet were encased in a pair of brown canvas "sneakers." Ira had glimpsed him frequently about the corridors of Parkinson Hall, but this present costume was not what he wore at recitations, which, as Ira reflected, was a fortunate thing for the sobriety of the classrooms!
Hicks finally removed his gaze slowly from Ira, sighed and said dejectedly: "I'll have a look at it, I guess. It might give me what I'm after. Where is it?"
It lay in the centre of the desk, a cheap little limp-leather affair of infinitesimal print and a woeful lack of contents. Hicks shook his head as he opened it and ran his long fingers over the edges of the leaves. Ira saw, with a sort of fascination, that the tips of the fingers turned back almost at right angles under pressure. Hicks regretfully closed the book and pushed it from him. "What do you know about the Hamiltonian-System?"
"Not a thing," answered Ira cheerfully. "What is it?"
"It's a system of teaching languages. But who invented it? Was it James or William? And if he did invent it how does it happen that John Locke wrote about it a century before? Explain that if you can."