t them labour like the blessed Apostles, that’s what I say. And if your Jackie were my Jackie I’d take him from those books and send him off with the masons.’
Jackie’s heart assented to these last words. As learning went on it became less agreeable. There were fewer discoveries in it, it lengthened out like a midday road. Sir Ralph had ceased to teach him what he could repeat to the astonishment of others. There were no more anecdotes of the basilisk, the swallow curing her blindness, the virtues of precious stones. Instead, it was all proportions and properties, things impossible to remember. And there sat Sir Ralph, plucking at his lower lip, brooding some thought of his own, or endlessly, scornfully patient.
‘The Proportion of Diapente, I said. What is the Proportion of Diapente? Pooh, you will never learn! And why should you?’