Maddox and he walked down to the collection of old stones which had appeared to David the dullest of the antique things of Baxminster. Some of the lettering on one of these was still distinguishable.
“Yes, ‘Optimo Maximo,’” said Maddox. “I expect that gap is ‘Jovi.’ Then, lower down, do you see, ‘P. Aelius’: that must be the chap who dedicated it. Funny that it should stand here now for you and me to read, while the cathedral tower squints at us over the attics where the ghosts live.”
Maddox had seated himself cross-legged on the grass to examine the altar, and David leaned over him following the letters as he traced them with his smooth brown finger. And at once the subject even of Roman altars leaped into interest. Maddox shaded the lowest line of the inscription with his hand to catch the shape of the weather-worn letters.
“Can’t read any more,” he said. “But anyhow one day, long before the cathedral was built, Publius Aelius set that up, because the gods had been good to him. What a lot of jolly things there are! And some fellows go mooning along never looking at anything.”
“I’m afraid you mean me,” suggested David modestly.
Maddox looked up at him over his shoulder.
“Well, I don’t,” he said. “And there’s a bit of an arch. Perhaps that came from the temple where P. Aelius put his altar.”
Maddox asked for (and was given) another look at the Keats before he left, and proposed to David that he should walk with him as far as the old palace.
“Best afternoon I’ve spent for ages,” said the Idol, as they parted. “I wish I wasn’t going away to-morrow, or I should ask to be allowed to come again. Anyhow, we meet at Adams’s in September.”
A haunting doubt had been present in David’s mind at intervals all that heavenly afternoon. Now it had to find expression.
“I say, I hope it hasn’t been awful cheek of me to have asked you to have tea, and all that?” he said.
“I can stand lots of that sort of cheek,” said the other.
It was the afternoon of such a November day as the pessimistic call typical: a cold, south-westerly gale drove streaming flocks of huddled cloud across the sky, like some fierce and boisterous shepherd, and the whole of the great court at Marchester stood ankle-deep in gravelly pools of wind-flecked, rain-beaten water. The gale had stripped bare of their few remaining leaves the avenue of lime-trees which ran between the gate and the in-boarders’ house at the far end of the court, and to-day they stood, stark pyramids of dripping branches and twigs, that whistled as the wind hissed through them. Though the day was Saturday, and in consequence a half-holiday, there were but few signs of outdoor animation, for the conditions of the weather were sufficiently diabolical to tinge with some touch of respect the contempt in which healthy boys hold the vagaries of climate. One occasionally, with collar turned up, fled splashing across the court from one house to another, or now and then a small company of drenched enthusiasts would trot in, in dripping shorts and sweaters, from their training run along the London Road, or a couple of figures, with racquets protected under their coats, would dash across from the racquet-court. But football had been officially announced to be “off,” since the field was neither more nor less than a morass, and without doubt the most comfortable conditions of life were to-day to be obtained in front of a fire with a novel to read, or, under stress of necessity, arrears of work to be overhauled and demolished.