Lempriere's Dictionary Read Online Free PDF Page A

page of Thuycidides and the Greek characters swam as his ears caught snatches of the nightly dialogue.
    ‘What of it? Did he hurt?’
    ‘Must he snap a leg before you’ll see it, Charles? You’re as blind as the boy.’ They spoke in the hush reserved for worry or intimacy. Lemprière’s fingertips brushed the chalky surface of the page before him. Three feet from his face he could not read it, inches and the letters were hard-edged and distinct. His parents were not intimate.
    ‘He’ll be a fine scholar, perhaps the finest of his age. What need for him to step over buckets?’
    ‘It’s the reading’s ruined his eyes. Ruined
him
.’ This last hissed, answered by Charles Lemprière’s snort of disbelief.
    ‘He’s grown strange to us Charles, you know it.’
    ‘He’s simply fond of his studies, the balance will come in time. I was the same, I remember it well.’
    ‘Oh yes, the Lemprières have ever been the same, that much I know. Nothing changes, does it Charles?’ Her voice was bitter.
    Lemprière caught only muffled words after that, his mother’s soft sobbing. The debate was a familiar one to him. He stayed awake waiting for it, enjoying his central role. He felt intimate with his parents as they unknowingly told him all they felt regarding him. Normally his mother seemed to understand little of what he said, while his father held himself in reserve, harbouring feelings his son could only guess at within a stern outward aspect. This, however, was to be the last of these particular discussions for the next morning it transpired that a resolution had been reached. John Lemprière was to have eye-glasses.
    So it was that a week later two figures could be seen making the four mile trek across the island from Rozel to Saint Helier. Taller, and walking half a pace ahead of his son, Charles Lemprière picked his way through the ruts of the road with a practised ease. An occasional glance at the sky reassured him that though they would be spattered with mud to the knee, they would at least reach their destination dry. His son stumbled frequently and each time he did so Charles would forbear to look back but would stiffen and wince inaudibly to himself. His wife was right of course, but blindness, of the eye or mind, had its benefits. It was possible to see too much. The path was passing through a wood. He ducked an overhanging branch and lifted it for his son. The pair walked on. Passing Five Oaks, they gained the brow of the slope and Charles saw St Helier laid out ahead, beyond it Elizabeth Castle improbably afloat in the harbour. It was only five years since Rullecourt and seven hundred men had got the governor out of bed to sign away the island. And, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he had signed. Elizabeth Castle stood firm then. Poor Moses Corbet, running through the marketplace with musket balls peppering his hat. There were more Martellos than cottages now.
    His son heard Saint Helier long before he saw it. The town clamoured at him, open arms brushed at his jacket and the din of human voices as they transacted, bickered or greeted each other, enfolded him in an anonymous, urban welcome. He caught his father’s arm and was hurried through the crush as its sounds crested and broke over his head. Charles Lemprière, son in tow, carved a passage through the business, gossip and grind ofJersey. The market crowd thinned as they took a sidestreet past The Peirson and walked through streets which seemed unnaturally silent after the hubbub of the marketplace. Another turn and they arrived, breathing heavily, at the workshop of Ichnabod Bonamy, glassmaker and lensgrinder. Charles was reaching for the bell when a voice boomed from within.
    ‘Come in Lemprière!’
    They entered and found themselves face to face with Ichnabod holding a coal shovel in one hand and a large, stuffed owl in the other.
    ‘Welcome, welcome you both. Are you well Charles? The boy I know of already, he of the stiff eyes, hmm? Forgive the