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As I say, the Professor had quite forgotten that he had a visitor when he heard a clear little voice asking politely:

"Would you please tell me what these pictures are about? They are not like the ones in my picture books. I think these must be knights, ’cause they have helmets on!"

The Professor started, and looked at him over his spectacles. The book he had given the child was a volume of Flaxman’s immortal illustrations to Homer. Going over to the hearth rug, he sat down by the boy, and before he knew what he was about he had launched into an abbreviated
and expurgated version of the Trojan War. For the Professor’s heart was not really dead after all, you see, only buried beneath an accumulation of Sanskrit forms and Greek idioms.

After that, Jack-a-Boy went often to see the Professor. One evening, when I went in to borrow a book from my learned friend, I found a scarlet and gold Harlequin all hung with silver bells perched on a volume of Friedrich Nietzsche. I took no pains to conceal my amusement, and the Professor looked up very sheepishly, muttering: "That rascal left the thing here this afternoon. "

He made friends with everyone in the Terrace in just the same way, and seemed personally interested in all our miserable little doings. Even the crabbed old spinster in Number 326, whose lodgers stood in absolute fear of her, was soon known to be one of his conquests. She made him a little toy dog that was stiff and hard and gray like herself. It was solidly stuffed with sawdust, and had four corncob legs of uneven lengths, and it was an awkward and uncomfortable thing to hold in your arms. But Jack-a-Boy carried it about with him religiously for days, "For I wouldn’t like to hurt her feelings," he said. He did not care much for toys, but he was very proud of anything that was given to him. I believe if anyone had given Jack-a-Boy the most unsightly of love tokens, he, who was so fond of pretty things, would have received it joyfully and treasured it.

Soon after he came he asked if he might sit in my music room while I was giving lessons, and when the piano was not in use he used to sit down and pick out the most charming little airs for himself, simple minor melodies, indefinitely sad, like the verses of young poets, but so graceful and individual that they made those hours sweet to remember. Music came easily and naturally to him as speech, and the sense of harmonies was strangely developed in him, though he was such a nervous child we never dared let him practice much. I fell into a habit of playing to him in the twilight, after the long, dull days were over, and when he was not with the Professor, hearing about Grecian heroes, he was usually with me at that hour. I used to fancy that Jack-a-Boy would make music of his own some day, perhaps quite as beautiful as any that I played for him, and I used to wonder what form of expression the beautiful little soul of his would choose.

He did not play much with the other boys of the street. "They are such rough boys," he whispered confidentially to me. The gentle ways of the girls suited him better, and deep down in my heart I was afraid that, in spite of his soldier clothes and his love for the Grecian heroes, Jack-a-Boy was a coward. But one morning as I was sitting on the piazza, watching Jack-a-Boy play with one of the little girls of the Terrace, I saw another boy come up and maliciously stick a pin in the little girl’s balloon. Jack-a-Boy flew at him like a wildcat, fists, teeth, feet and all the rest of him. I never saw such anger in a child. It was the frenzied, impotent revolt of a high and delicate nature against brutality and coarseness and baseness, like those outbursts of Stevenson’s youth. The boy’s comrades flew to his rescue, and in a moment our boy was down under four of them. I ran screaming to the edge of the porch, but an angular form darted past. It was the Professor, hatless and coatless, with both pairs of spectacles on his nose. In a moment he came back carrying what was left of Jack-a-Boy, with the little girl wailing at his heels.