or. "It is all wrong. Here she
is, and here she apparently means to stay. The poor child doesn't
understand. She thinks I'm older than Methusaleh, and that she can live
here with me. I can't explain it to her--you--don't think _you_ could,
do you, Hardinge?"

"No, I don't, indeed," says Hardinge, in a hurry. "What on earth has
brought her here at all?"

"To _stay_. Haven't I told you? To stay for ever. She says"--with a
groan--"she is going to settle me! To--to _brush my hair_! To--make my
tea. She says I'm her guardian, and insists on living with me. She
doesn't understand! Hardinge," desperately, "what _am_ I to do?"

"Marry her!" suggests Hardinge, who I regret to say is choking with
laughter.

"That is a _jest_!" says the professor haughtily. This unusual tone from
the professor strikes surprise to the soul of Hardinge. He looks at him.
But the professor's new humor is short-lived. He sinks upon a chair in a
tired sort of a way, letting his arms fall over the sides of it. As a
type of utter despair he is a distinguished specimen.

"Why don't you take her home again, back to the old aunt?" says
Hardinge, moved by his misery.

"I can't. She tells me it would be useless, that the house is locked up,
and--and besides, Hardinge, her aunt--after _this_, you know--would
be----"

"Naturally," says Hardinge, after which he falls back upon his cigar.
"Light your pipe," says he, "and we'll think it over." The professor
lights it, and both men draw nearer to each other.

"I'm afraid she won't go back to her aunt any way," says the professor,
as a beginning to the "thinking it over." He pushes his glasses up to
his forehead, and finally discards them altogether, flinging them on the
table near.

"If she saw you now she might understand," says Hardinge--for, indeed,
the professor without his glasses loses thirty per cent. of old Time.

"She wouldn't," says the professor. "And never mind that. Come back to
the question. I say she will never go back to her aunt."

He looks anxiously at Hardinge. One can see that he would part with a
good deal of honest coin of the realm, if his companion would only _not_
agree with him.

"It looks like it," said Hardinge, who is rather enjoying himself. "By
Jove! what a thing to happen to _you_, Curzon, of all men in the world.
What are you going to do, eh?"

"It isn't so much that," says the professor faintly. "It is what is
_she_ going to do?"

"_Next!_" supplements Hardinge. "