ccess to the rooms of several Professors and
will now attempt to give you some idea--only," she broke off, "I can't
think how to do it. It's all so queer. These Professors," she went on,
"live in large houses built round grass plots each in a kind of cell by
himself. Yet they have every convenience and comfort. You have only to
press a button or light a little lamp. Their papers are beautifully
filed. Books abound. There are no children or animals, save half a dozen
stray cats and one aged bullfinch--a cock. I remember," she broke off,
"an Aunt of mine who lived at Dulwich and kept cactuses. You reached the
conservatory through the double drawing-room, and there, on the hot
pipes, were dozens of them, ugly, squat, bristly little plants each in a
separate pot. Once in a hundred years the Aloe flowered, so my Aunt
said. But she died before that happened--" We told her to keep to the
point. "Well," she resumed, "when Professor Hobkin was out, I examined
his life work, an edition of Sappho. It's a queer looking book, six or
seven inches thick, not all by Sappho. Oh, no. Most of it is a defence
of Sappho's chastity, which some German had denied, and I can assure you
the passion with which these two gentlemen argued, the learning they
displayed, the prodigious ingenuity with which they disputed the use of
some implement which looked to me for all the world like a hairpin
astounded me; especially when the door opened and Professor Hobkin
himself appeared. A very nice, mild, old gentleman, but what could _he_
know about chastity?" We misunderstood her.

"No, no," she protested, "he's the soul of honour I'm sure--not that he
resembles Rose's sea captain in the least. I was thinking rather of my
Aunt's cactuses. What could _they_ know about chastity?"

Again we told her not to wander from the point,--did the Oxbridge
professors help to produce good people and good books?--the objects of
life.

"There!" she exclaimed. "It never struck me to ask. It never occurred
to me that they could possibly produce anything."

"I believe," said Sue, "that you made some mistake. Probably Professor
Hobkin was a gynaecologist. A scholar is a very different sort of man. A
scholar is overflowing with humour and invention--perhaps addicted to
wine, but what of that?--a delightful companion, generous, subtle,
imaginative--as stands to reason. For he spends his life in company with
the finest human beings that have ever existed."

"Hum," said Cast