the professor. "And to think that you've
never been to school."

"Why, I've been going to school every day, almost, ever since I can
remember. And haven't I had the finest teacher in the world, all to
myself?"

His face brightened responsive to her laugh.

This was at the tea-table--for the Keltons dined at noon in conformity
with local custom--nearly a week after the unsigned letter had been
delivered to Andrew Kelton by the unknown messenger. Sylvia and her
grandfather had just returned from a walk, prolonged into the cool dusk.
They sat at the square walnut table, where they had so long faced each
other three times a day. Sylvia had never doubted that their lives would
go on forever in just this way,--that they would always be, as her
grandfather liked to put it, "shipmates," walking together, studying
together, sitting as they sat now, at their simple meals, with just the
same quaintly flowered dishes, the same oddly turned teapot, with its
attendant cream pitcher (slightly cracked as to lip) and the sugar-bowl,
with a laboring ship depicted in blue on its curved side, which was not
related, even by the most remote cousinship, to anything else in the
pantry.

Professor Kelton was unwontedly preoccupied to-night. Sylvia saw that he
had barely touched his strawberries--their first of the season, though
they were fine ones and the cream was the thickest. She folded her hands
on the edge of the table and watched him gravely in the light of the
four candles whose flame flared in the breeze that swept softly through
the dining-room windows. Feeling her eyes upon him the old gentleman
suddenly roused himself.

"We've had good times, haven't we, Sylvia? And I wonder if I have really
taught you anything. I suppose I ought to have been sending you to
school with the other youngsters about here, but the fact is that I
never saw a time when I wanted to part with you! You've been a fine
little shipmate, but you're not so little any more. Sixteen your next
birthday! If that's so it isn't best for us to go on this way. You must
try your oar in deeper water. You've outgrown me--and I'm a dull old
fellow at best. You must go where you will meet other girls, and deal
with a variety of teachers,--not just one dingy old fellow like me. Have
you ever thought what kind of a school you'd like to go to?"

"I don't believe I have; I don't know much about schools."

"Well, don't you think you'd like to get away from so much mathemati