r Septimus began happy days wherein the clock was disregarded. The vague
projects that had filled his head for the construction of a new type of
quick-firing gun took definite shape. Some queer corner of his brain had
assimilated a marvelous knowledge of field artillery, and Zora was amazed
at the extent of his technical library, which Wiggleswick had overlooked in
his statement of the salvage from the burned-down house at Shepherd's Bush.
Now and then he would creep from the shyness which enveloped the inventive
side of his nature, and would talk with her with unintelligible earnestness
of these dreadful engines; of radial and initial hoop pressures, of drift
angles, of ballistics, of longitudinal tensions, and would jot down
trigonometrical formulae illustrated by diagrams until her brain reeled;
or of his treatise on guns of large caliber just written and now in the
printers' hands, and of the revolution in warfare these astounding machines
would effect. His eyes would lose their dreamy haze and would become
luminous, his nervous fingers would become effectual, the man would become
transfigured; but as soon as the fervid fit passed off he would turn with
amiable aimlessness to his usual irrelevance. Sometimes he would work all
night, either in his room or his workshop, at his inventions. Sometimes he
would dream for days together. There was an old-fashioned pond in the
middle of the common, with rough benches placed here and there at the
brink. Septimus loved to sit on one of them and look at the ducks. He said
he was fascinated by the way they wagged their tails. It suggested an
invention: of what nature he could not yet determine. He also formed a
brotherly intimacy with a lame donkey belonging to the sexton, and used to
feed him with _pate de foie gras_ sandwiches, specially prepared by
Wiggleswick, until he was authoritatively informed that raw carrots would
be more acceptable. To see the two of them side by side watching the ducks
in the pond wag their tails was a touching spectacle.

Another amenity in Septimus's peaceful existence was Emmy.

Being at this time out of an engagement, she paid various flying visits to
Nunsmere, bringing with her an echo of comic opera and an odor of _Peau
d'Espagne_. She dawned on Septimus's horizon like a mischievous and
impertinent planet, so different from Zora, the great fixed star of his
heaven, yet so pretty, so twinkling, so artlessly and so obviously
revolving round some t