e begun to learn?"

"My dear, you have learnt everything that I can teach you, and,
besides, I am going away the day after to-morrow."

"Going away!" and then and there, without the slightest warning,
Angela--who, for all her beauty and learning, very much resembled the
rest of her sex--burst into tears.

"Come, come, Angela," said Mr. Fraser, in a voice meant to be gruff,
but only succeeding in being husky, for, oddly enough, it is trying
even to a clergyman on the wrong side of middle-age to be wept over by
a lovely woman; "don't be nonsensical; I am only going for a few
months."

At this intelligence she pulled up a little.

"Oh," she said, between her sobs, "how you frightened me! How could
you be so cruel! Where are you going to?"

"I am going for a long trip in southern Europe. Do you know that I
have scarcely been away from this place for twenty years, so I mean to
celebrate the conclusion of our studies by taking a holiday."

"I wish you would take me with you."

Mr. Fraser coloured slightly, and his eye brightened. He sighed as he
answered--

"I am afraid, my dear, that it would be impossible."

Something warned Angela not to pursue the subject.

"Now, Angela, I believe that it is usual, on the occasion of the
severance of a scholastic connection, to deliver something in the
nature of a farewell oration. Well, I am not going to do that, but I
want you to listen to a few words."

She did not answer, but, drawing a stool to a corner of the fireplace,
she wiped her eyes and sat down almost at his feet, clasping her knees
with her hands, and gazing rather sadly into the fire.

"You have, dear Angela," he began, "been educated in a somewhat
unusual way, with the result that, after ten years of steady work that
has been always interesting, though sometimes arduous, you have
acquired information denied to the vast majority of your sex, whilst
at the same time you could be put to the blush in many things by a
school-girl of fifteen. For instance, though I firmly believe that you
could at the present moment take a double first at the University,
your knowledge of English literature is almost nil, and your history
of the weakest. All a woman's ordinary accomplishments, such as
drawing, playing, singing, have of necessity been to a great extent
neglected, since I was not able to teach them to you myself, and you
have had to be guided solely by books and by the light of Nature in
giving to them such time a