hen you have so much Greek in your
head!" And, obeying an impulse, as she so often did, she caught his hand
in both her own and kissed it heartily. Then she skimmed across the
parlor, and he heard her child's voice "lilting lightly up the" stairs
as he stood--in a position suggestive of Mrs. Jarley's wax-works--gazing
fixedly at the hand which she had kissed.

"She regards me as a father," he said to himself severely. "Am I going
mad? Or becoming childish? No; I am only sixty. But, even if it were
possible, it would be base, unmanly, to take advantage of her
loneliness, her gratitude. No, I will be firm."

So, when the offending "example" was handed to him, with the
above-quoted touching statement as to its total depravity, he looked
only at the slate. Gently and patiently, as if to a little child, he
pointed out the errors and expounded the rule, amply rewarded by her
joyful exclamation, "Oh, I see _exactly_ how it's done, now! You do
explain things beautifully. I really think I could have learned a good
deal if I'd had a teacher like you when I went to school."

"Come to me whenever your lessons perplex you, my dear," he answered,
still looking at the slate; "come freely, as if--as if I were your
father."

"Ah, how kind, how good you are to me!" she cried, seizing his slender,
wrinkled hand and holding it between her soft palms. "How glad papa must
be to know it! It almost seems like having him again. Must you go?
Good-night."

And, innocently, as if to her father, she held up her face for a kiss.

The professor turned red, turned pale, hesitated, faltered, and then
kissed her reverently on her forehead,--or, if the truth must be told,
on her soft, frizzled hair, which, according to the fashion of the day,
hung almost over her eyes.

Two evenings in the week after this were devoted to arithmetic. The
professor was firm--as a rule; but when her joyous "Oh, I see _exactly_
how it's done, now!" followed his patient reiteration of rules and
explanations, how could he help rewarding himself by a glance at the
glowing face? how could he keep his eyes permanently fixed upon that
stony-hearted slate?

So it went on through the winter and spring, till it was nearing the
time for the summer vacation. The professor knew only too well that
Rosamond had been invited to spend it with some distant
cousins,--distant in both senses of the word,--and that on her return
she would be swallowed up by the academy and would bright