" Dust was on it half an inch thick. He
laid it on the table and found a place in it marked by a strip of paper.
And then he gave a short roar at the top of his voice, and said:
"Was it the hippopotamus you wanted to be read to about then?"
"Did I hear ye open the book?" said old man McCree. "Many and weary be
the months since my lad has read it to me. I dinno; but I took a great
likings to them Greeks. Ye left off at a place. 'Tis a fine day outside,
lad. Be out and take rest from your work. I have gotten used to me chair
by the windy and me pipe."
"Pel-Peloponnesus was the place where we left off, and not
hippopotamus," said Danny. "The war began there. It kept something doing
for thirty years. The headlines says that a guy named Philip of Macedon,
in 338 B. C., got to be boss of Greece by getting the decision at the
battle of Cher-Cheronoea. I'll read it."
With his hand to his ear, rapt in the Peloponnesian War, old man McCree
sat for an hour, listening.
Then he got up and felt his way to the door of the kitchen. Mrs. McCree
was slicing cold meat. She looked up. Tears were running from old man
McCree's eyes.
"Do you hear our lad readin' to me?" he said. "There is none finer in
the land.
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