“Neither of them, Charlotte.  The ‘Maga’ makes me think, and I know you detest poetry.  I got a letter to-night from Agnes Bulteel, and it appears to be about Professor Sedgwick.  I was so annoyed at Harry I could not feel any interest in it then; but, if you don’t object, I should like to hear you read it now.”

“Object?  No, indeed.  I think a great deal of the old professor.  What gay times father and I have had on the Screes with him, and his hammer and leather bags!  And, as Agnes writes a large, round hand, and does not fresco her letters, I can read about the professor easily.”

RESPECTED MISS SANDAL,—­I have such a thing to tell you about Professor Sedgwick and our Joe; hoping that the squire or Miss Charlotte may see him, and let him know that Joe meant no harm at all.  One hot forenoon lately, when we were through at home, an old gentlemanly make of a fellow came into our fold, and said, quite natural, that he wanted somebody to go with him on to the fells.  We all stopped, and took a good look at him before anybody spoke; but at last father said, middling sharp-like,—­he always speaks that way, does father, when we’re busy,—­

     “We’ve something else to do here than go raking over the fells on a
     fine day like this with nobody knows who.”

He gave father a lile, cheerful bit of a laugh, and said he didn’t want to hinder work; but he would give anybody that knew the fells well a matter of five shillings to go with him, and carry his two little bags.  And father says to our Joe, “Away with thee!  It’s a crown more than ever thou was worth at home.”  So the strange man gave Joe two little leather bags to carry; and Joe thought he was going to make his five shillings middling easy, for he never expected he would find any thing on the fells to put into the bags.  But Joe was mistaken.  The old gentleman, he said, went louping over wet spots and great stones, and scraffling over crags and screes, till you would have thought he was some kin to a Herdwick sheep.

Charlotte laughed heartily at this point.  “It is just the way Sedgwick goes on.  He led father and me exactly such a chase one day last June.”

“I dare say he did.  I remember you looked like it.  Go on.”

After a while he began looking hard at all the stones and crags he came to; and then he took to breaking lumps off them with a queer little hammer he had with him, and stuffing the bits into the bags that Joe was carrying.  He fairly capped Joe then.  He couldn’t tell what to make of such a customer.  At last Joe asked him why ever he came so far up the fell for little bits of stone, when he might get so many down in the dales?  He laughed, and went on knapping away with his little hammer, and said he was a jolly-jist.

“Geologist she means, Charlotte.”

“Of course; but Agnes spells it ‘jolly-jist.’”

“Agnes ought to know better.  She waited table frequently, and must have heard the word pronounced.  Go on, Charlotte.”