rd to me about the subject of your literary work. There was a
time when things were different, and you were not so slow in availing
yourself of my help, and asking my advice.'

We murmured something about taking up the pen which had been laid aside
by a far abler hand, and our deep gratitude for past assistance in our
work, which could never be forgotten.

'And do you think that I cannot help you now?' our visitor replied, in a
very injured tone of voice. 'Is the old power dead, because it has not
recently been used? Ernest, I think you very ungrateful not to confide
in me. Come, tell me what you are writing.'

A suggestion about the proverbial curiosity of women rose to our lips,
but died away without utterance. In the meantime, her eyes wandered over
our study-table strewed with papers, and lighted upon the well-worn
desk.

'Why, Ernest, where did you find this? My dear old desk, which has been
lost ever so long! I do believe you have been ransacking its contents!
Why did you not tell me that you had found it? What are you doing with
my papers, sir?'

The mischief was out! We tried to explain that the world ought not to be
deprived of that which would benefit mankind; that the peace and
prosperity of the country might be sacrificed if it were deprived of
these discoveries of science, which were calculated to secure such
beneficial results.

At length we gained our point, and obtained the full sanction of the
late Lady Professor of Girtham College to publish her papers. Thus her
obedient pupil is enabled to repay his late instructress for all her
kindness to him, and in some measure to compensate the scientific and
political world for the loss of one of its most original investigators
in the regions of polemical studies, which, not without a struggle, she
resigned when she deigned to become his wife.

THE END.

_Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London._

End of Project Gutenberg's The Romance of Mathematics, by P. Hampson

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