such thing), and he promised
that, to pay for her goodness in listening, he would give her a lesson in
astronomy the next fair evening, if she would be his scholar, at which
she blushed deeper than before, and said something which certainly was
not No.

IX

There was no sooner a vacancy on our side of the table, than the Master
proposed a change of seats which would bring the Young Astronomer into
our immediate neighborhood. The Scarabee was to move into the place of
our late unlamented associate, the Man of Letters, so called. I was to
take his place, the Master to take mine, and the young man that which had
been occupied by the Master. The advantages of this change were obvious.
The old Master likes an audience, plainly enough; and with myself on one
side of him, and the young student of science, whose speculative turn is
sufficiently shown in the passages from his poem, on the other side, he
may feel quite sure of being listened to. There is only one trouble in
the arrangement, and that is that it brings this young man not only close
to us, but also next to our Scheherezade.

I am obliged to confess that he has shown occasional marks of inattention
even while the Master was discoursing in a way that I found agreeable
enough. I am quite sure it is no intentional disrespect to the old
Master. It seems to me rather that he has become interested in the
astronomical lessons he has been giving the Young Girl. He has studied
so much alone, that it is naturally a pleasure to him to impart some of
his knowledge. As for his young pupil, she has often thought of being a
teacher herself, so that she is of course very glad to acquire any
accomplishment that may be useful to her in that capacity. I do not see
any reason why some of the boarders should have made such remarks as they
have done. One cannot teach astronomy to advantage, without going out of
doors, though I confess that when two young people go out by daylight to
study the stars, as these young folks have done once or twice, I do not
so much wonder at a remark or suggestion from those who have nothing
better to do than study their neighbors.

I ought to have told the reader before this that I found, as I suspected,
that our innocent-looking Scheherezade was at the bottom of the popgun
business. I watched her very closely, and one day, when the little
monkey made us all laugh by stopping the Member of the Haouse in the
middle of a speech he was rep