Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/1029



ADEMOISELLE VERRIER, the new nursery governess, sat diffidently on the edge of the chair the professor had offered her and looked at him with an alert interest in her dark eyes. She was young and rather nervous, and it was not reassuring to observe that her eminent employer had returned to his desk and was restlessly fumbling his papers, as if anxious to resume work on them. He did not speak for fully five minutes, though he glanced at her vaguely once or twice, each time conveying to her, in some indefinable manner, the impression that her continued presence in his library was in the nature of a painful surprise to him.

At his feet sat his little girl, her small back turned rather ostentatiously toward her father and his guest. She seemed intensely occupied, and occasionally uttered a gurgle of annoyance or satisfaction over the progress of a mysterious enterprise which held her attention. Other than this there was no sound in the room.

The Frenchwoman, who was not without a sense of humor, felt it stirring in her now, and became cruelly conscious of a youthful desire to giggle. It was quite evident that the famous professor, as noted for his absent-mindedness as for his erudition and the number and authority of his scientific works, had wholly forgotten why she was there. Her lips twitched as she realized this and pictured to herself the amusement of her friends if they could look in on the restful tableau she and her host presented. These friends had been a unit in their warnings against her acceptance of the situation Professor Seymour had offered her; recalling their dark predictions now, she found her respect for their judgment increasing.

An unusually loud exclamation from the child finally attracted the professor's attention. He glanced vaguely at her, then at his visitor, and the light of a sudden recollection flashed in his near-sighted eyes. His relief was so great and so artlessly obvious that Mademoiselle Verrier smiled upon him irresistibly—an attention he received with mild wonder.

"Before entering upon your new duties, mademoiselle," he began, in his precise and formal tones, "I desire to explain to you that I am endeavoring to train my daughter along purely scientific and rational lines. I may add candidly that thus far I have encountered—er—surprising difficulties. There is in her, I observe, a peculiar restlessness,—a physical activity that seems quite abnormal. I have not noted it in others. However, she is still very young. In fact, she has not yet reached the fifth anniversary of her birth. I venture therefore to hope that as her mind matures and she becomes able to lend me more intelligent cooperation—Dear, dear, what is she doing now?"

He stopped and gazed helplessly over his glasses at the deeply engrossed child. In one hand she held a mucilage-bottle and in the other the end of a small Shiraz rug, on which she poured the sticky fluid quickly and with lavish generosity. Then, before the startled observers could interfere, she rolled the rug into a compact wad, and sat back to look upon her work. Her plump body was quivering with interest and pleasurable excitement, and in her brown eyes blazed the light of scientific research. The scholarly face of the professor flushed as he took in the situation. He rose without a word, removed the bottle from her clinging hand, pushed the rug to one side, and resumed his seat, lifting her into his lap with an accustomed ease that surprised the one observer.

"It is my habit, mademoiselle," he explained, turning to the governess, the