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Rh staring disconsolately at the unfinished sum before him. I, too, had given it up in despair.

"It's mediocre," he muttered. "Absolutely mediocre, and I won't stand it."

Mediocre. It was a new word to me, and I wondered where he had picked it up. It was like Angel to spring it on me this way.

"Awfully mediocre," I assented. "And it can't be done."

A flicker of annoyance crossed his face that his new word should be thus lightly bandied, but he went on—"Just listen here: an apple-woman who had four score of apples in her cart, sold three dozen at four pence, half-penny a dozen; two and a half dozen at five pence a dozen. At what price would she have to sell the remaining, in order to realize"—

"And look here," I interrupted, wrathfully, "Why does she always give us sums about an apple-woman, or a muffin-man? It just makes a chap hungry. Why doesn't she make one up about a dentist for a change, or somethin' like that?"

"Yes," assented Angel, catching at the idea. "Like this: if a dentist pulled five teeth out of one lady, and seven and a half out of another, at two shillings apiece how many must he pull in order to—"