Short Fiction

as he speaks, where stands poor old Matthews, the picture of patient endurance, with the nose of a tabby kitten peeping out of a black bag she holds in one hand, and grasping with the other a leathern lead which a small shaggy Skye is straining to its fullest extent. Both animals had been pets of Miss Maggie’s, fallen in love with by Lettice, and presented to her by the former young lady as a token of enduring friendship.

Lettice turns upon him brightly. Depend upon it she has yet another arrow left in her quiver, and the doctor will have the benefit of it.

“Oh, Dr. Herron,” she begins demurely enough, in the sweetest, softest whisper possible, “I had nearly forgotten. Do you know I had a letter from papa this morning?⁠—such a letter! I really do think he and Mary have been flirting finely while we’ve been away, and I think they’ll be married, and then, you know, our engagement must be broken off at once, because you’d be my uncle, and it would be quite too dreadful to marry one’s uncle.”

“Yes,” replies Dr. Herron, “it would be quite too dreadful to marry one’s uncle, and I don’t see any way out of it, Lettice” (this in an equally low voice, and looking down into the clear bright eyes), “unless we get married first, and then, if your papa likes to marry his own daughter-in-law⁠—my sister that is⁠—no one can have anything to say against it.”

And married first they accordingly were.

At Twelve Tonight

I

“ ‘In this treatise,’ ” read Professor Thurstane, laying down his pen and taking up his manuscript, “ ‘I desire to present the philosopher, not as a man destitute of emotion or passion, but as one having both under such perfect control that he can say to this or that emotion or passion “go,” and it goeth, or “come,” and it cometh.’ Yes, I think that will do for a beginning.” He broke off abruptly, exclaiming, “Confound it, who’s that?” as a timid rap sounded at his door.

The Professor looked sharply round to see if his bolt were drawn. “Who’s there?” he thundered again, upon which a thin, quavering voice, that one could vow belonged to an elderly spinster, replied:

“Cousin John, something particular; I can’t shout it through the keyhole.”

“Let it alone then.”

“But I must, if you don’t open your door.”

“Shout it then, and be done with it.”

A long pause ensued, as if the owner of the timid knuckles couldn’t quite make up her mind what to do. Then just as the Professor was beginning to congratulate himself that he might get back to his work, the lady’s voice was heard again:

“It’s really serious, or I wouldn’t disturb you. Nellie has been skating all the afternoon on the pond with Piers, and it’s getting dark”⁠—here a pause for breath⁠—“and I’ve sent for her, and she won’t come in”⁠—another pause for breath⁠—“and I’ve been out to her; but as soon as she sees me on one side of the pond, she skates round to the other, and I can’t catch her.”

No answer from the Professor, but a low chuckling sound as if he were laughing.

“Cousin John, what am I to do?” pursued the lady.

“Nothing.”

“But it’s getting dark.”

“Let it get dark.”

“I’ve always done my duty in the house⁠—”

“Confound it!” shouted the Professor, “will you go away and leave me in peace? This is the hundred-and-fiftieth interruption I’ve had today, and⁠—”

But the lady didn’t hear the conclusion of the sentence. With the Professor’s voice raised to that pitch, her only terror was lest he might open his door, so she fled precipitately.

Now this Professor was by no means a typical specimen of “the poor and learned fraternity.” He was one of those unlucky individuals, who, between two stools, had fallen to the ground. Nature had intended him for a bookworm, fate had decreed that he should be a country gentleman. At a comparatively early age he had attained to the dignity of a professorship at his university; he had scarcely, so to speak, seated himself in the professorial chair, when, through the death of his elder brother, the paternal acres and the family mansion fell to his lot, and from henceforward the Professor lived out two lives in snatches. By fits and starts he was the Professor, by fits and starts the country gentleman. Inclination and fate seemed ever at cross purposes with him, inclination was forever sending him behind the iron bolt of his study door, fate was forever dragging him out of that study. First an orphan nephew⁠—Piers⁠—was thrown on his hands; he was no sooner started in life and promising to do well for himself as a barrister, than an orphan niece⁠—Nellie⁠—came upon the scene. This was a more serious responsibility still, for the young lady was not only a remarkably pretty girl, but an heiress into the bargain.

The Professor did his best to throw the half of his responsibilities on someone else’s shoulders. He invited an elderly spinster cousin to take up her abode in the house as Nellie’s chaperon, and at the same moment laid a quiet little plot on his own account to make up a match between Piers and Nellie with as little delay as possible. This desirable event, it seemed to him, would at one and the same moment relieve him of the anxiety of two youthful careers, and restore to him the possibility of a quiet life.

With this end in view Piers was invited to the house as often as possible, and the young people allowed to see as much as they liked of each other; a course of proceeding which sometimes greatly scandalised the spinster cousin, who had been so well looked after up to the age of thirty-five, that her matrimonial chances had suffered, and who now at fifty-five years of age was beginning to think her hope of a wedding-ring a forlorn one.

“The simpleton,” said the Professor to himself, as he once more