,' replied Charlotte.

'Oh,' said Ambrose, in his turn taken aback. He pretended to be so busy
sitting down that he couldn't say more than just Oh. We watched him in
silence fussing into his chair. 'How pleasant it is here,' he went on
when he was settled. 'No, I don't mind cold tea a bit, really. Mother,
why wouldn't you let the old man sit with us? He's a frightfully good
sort.'

'Because there are certain limits beyond which I decline to go,' replied
his mother, visibly annoyed that he should thus unconsciously side with
Charlotte.

'Oh but it was rough on him--don't you think so, Frau Nieberlein? We
have the biggest table and only half-fill it, and there isn't another
place to be had. It is so characteristically British for us to sit here
and keep other people out. He'll have to wait heaven knows how long for
his coffee, and he has walked miles.'

'I think,' said Charlotte slowly, loudly, and weightily, 'that he might
very well have joined us.'

'But you did not see him,' protested Mrs. Harvey-Browne. 'I assure you
he really was impossible. _Much_ worse than the woman we were talking
about.'

'I can only say,' said Charlotte, even slower, louder, and more
weightily, 'that one should, before all things, be human, and that one
has no right whatever to turn one's back on the smallest request of a
fellow-creature.'

Hardly had she said it, hardly had the bishop's wife had time to open
her mouth and stare in stoniest astonishment, hardly had I had time to
follow her petrified gaze, than an old man in a long waterproof garment
with a green felt hat set askew on his venerable head, came nimbly up
behind Charlotte, and bending down to her unsuspecting ear shouted into
it the amazing monosyllable 'Bo!'

THE SEVENTH DAY--_Continued_

AT STUBBENKAMMER

I believe I have somewhere remarked that Charlotte was not the kind of
person one could ever tickle. She was also the last person in the world
to whom most people would want to say Bo. The effect on her of this Bo
was alarming. She started up as though she had been struck, and then
stood as one turned to stone.

Brosy jumped up as if to protect her.

Mrs. Harvey-Browne looked really frightened, and gasped 'It is the old
man again--an escaped lunatic--how very unpleasant!'

'No, no,' I hurriedly explained, 'it is the Professor.'

'_The Professor?_ What, never the _Professor?_ What, _the_ Professor?
Brosy--Brosy'--she leaned over and seized his coat in a