? ? ? ? Without presuming to give my opinion on this question, I delivered my message.
? ? ? ? 'Well,' said Mr. Dick, in answer, 'my compliments to her, and I - I believe I have made a start. I think I have made a start,' said Mr. Dick, passing his hand among his grey hair, and casting anything but a confident look at his manuscript. 'You have been to school?'
? ? ? ? 'Yes, sir,' I answered; 'for a short time.'
? ? ? ? 'Do you recollect the date,' said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me, and taking up his pen to note it down, 'when King Charles the First had his head cut off?' I said I believed it happened in the year sixteen hundred and forty-nine.
? ? ? ? 'Well,' returned Mr. Dick, scratching his ear with his pen, and looking dubiously at me. 'So the books say; but I don't see how that can be. Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made that mistake of putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it was taken off, into mine?'
? ? ? ? I was very much surprised by the inquiry; but could give no information on this point.
? ? ? ? 'It's very strange,' said Mr. Dick, with a despondent look upon his papers, and with his hand among his hair again, 'that I never can get that quite right. I never can make that perfectly clear.
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