in, Mr. Leigh," he cried cheerily. "Come in. I thought it was
some student who wished to ask me what use there was in studying Latin.
I am just outlining an article on the Roman Forum for the new
encyclopaedia. You might like to see Boni's latest contribution, and
the photographs I took myself last summer."

He reached for his meerschaum pipe, and paused to gaze with a smoker's
admiration at the red-brown perfection of the polished bowl.

"But you have n't forgotten the dinner?" Leigh asked, perceiving that
the other was preparing to settle back in his chair for one of those
discursive talks in which his guests delighted.

"The dinner! I had quite forgotten it." And he put down the pipe with
evident reluctance. "Such is the power of preoccupation."

"We 're a tall set of men here," Leigh said, as the professor rose to
his feet. "You and the bishop and I would measure eighteen feet or
more, placed one above the other."

"Pelion on Ossa!" Cardington cried. "How much more impressive it makes
us seem than if you had merely stated that each of us was six feet
tall! It takes an astronomer to calculate great distances. I quite
compassionate those little fellows, our colleagues." His eyes twinkled
behind his rimless spectacles. "Just amuse yourself with these
photographs awhile. Not in your line, perhaps, but interesting to us
glow-worms that flit about in ruinous places. I 'll be with you in a
few moments."

Even from the room beyond he continued the conversation in his own odd
manner, passing to antipodal subjects by paths of association beyond
the guess of an imagination less vagrant than his own. With Cardington
conversation was a fine art. He loved the adequate or picturesque word
as a miner loves an ingot of gold, yet he was able to display his
linguistic stores without incurring the charge of pedantry, much as
certain women can carry without offence clothes that would smother a
more insignificant personality.

"We still have a few minutes to spare," he announced, when he presently
reappeared. "Now, which will you have, a Roman Catholic, or an
Episcopalian, or a Presbyterian beverage,--Benedictine, port wine, or
whiskey?"

Leigh's mood expanded in response to the hospitality. Here was a
little fling of the spirit of which he stood in need, a promise of
comradeship that was all the more welcome from the fact that his other
colleagues had kept him waiting in the vestibule of their regard.

"I'l