"
It was like music to hear him speak. A flood of joy went sweeping
through me at every word of praise he gave to Martin. And yet--I cannot
explain why, unless it was the woman in me, the Irish-woman, or
something like it--but I began to depreciate Martin, in order to "hoosh"
him on, so that he might say more on the same subject.
"Then he _did_ take his degree," I said. "He was never very clever at
his lessons, I remember, and I heard that he was only just able to
scrape through his examinations."
The young doctor fell to my bait like a darling. With a flaming face and
a nervous rush of racy words which made me think that if I closed my
eyes I should be back on the steps of the church in Rome talking to
Martin himself, he told me I was mistaken if I thought his friend was a
numskull, for he had had "the biggest brain-pan in College Green," and
the way he could learn things when he wanted to was wonderful.
He might be a bit shaky in his spelling, and perhaps he couldn't lick
the world in Latin, but his heart was always in exploring, and the way
he knew geography, especially the part of it they call the "Unknown,"
the Arctic, and the Antarctic, and what Charcot had done there, and
Biscoe and Bellamy and D'Urville and Greely and Nansen and Shackleton
and Peary, was enough to make the provost and professors look like fools
of the earth by the side of him.
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