“If I get below seventy will I be put down a grade?” she asked.  Then with intense solemnity, “I guess girls.”

They laughed together, youthfully.  “You are right,” he said.

And with a sigh of relief, Prudence answered, “That’s the first time I ever got a hundred in anything in my life.  I was very much accustomed to eighties when I was in school.  I am very common and unbrilliant,” she assured him.  “Fairy says you are perfectly horribly clever——­”

She glanced up when she heard his exclamation, and laughed at his rueful face.  “Oh, that isn’t Fairy’s expression.  She thinks brilliant and clever people are just adorable.  It is only I who think them horrible.”  Even Prudence could see that this did not help matters.  “I—­I do not mean that,” she stammered.  “I am sure you are very nice indeed, and we are going to be good friends, aren’t we?  But I am such a dunce myself that I am afraid of real clever people.  They are so superior.  And so uninteresting, and—­oh, I do not mean that either.”  Then Prudence laughed at her predicament.  “I may as well give it up.  What I really mean is that you are so nice and friendly and interesting, that I can hardly believe you are so clever.  You are the nicest smart person I ever saw,—­except my own family, I mean.”  She smiled up at him deliciously.  “Does that make it square?”

“More than square,” he said.  “You are too complimentary.  But the only thing that really counts to-day is whether we are going to be real good friends, as you suggested.  We are, aren’t we?  The very best and closest of friends?”

“Yes,” agreed Prudence, dimpling.  “I like men to be my friends,—­nice men, I mean.  But it isn’t always safe.  So many start out to be good friends, and then want to be silly.  So a girl has to be very careful.  But it’s perfectly safe with you, and so we can be the very best of friends.  I won’t need to be watchful for bad symptoms.”

“Do you think me so unmanly that I couldn’t fall in love?” he asked, and his voice was curious, as though she had hurt him.

“Oh, of course, you’ll fall in love,” laughed Prudence.  “All nice men do.—­But not with me,—­that was what I meant I couldn’t imagine a buggy professor—­oh, I beg your pardon!  But the twins are so silly and disrespectful, and they thought it was such a joke that I should even look at a professor of biology that they began calling you the buggy professor.  But they do not mean any harm by it, not the least in the world.  They’re such nice sweet girls, but—­young, you know.  Are your feelings hurt?” she asked anxiously.

“Not a bit!  I think the twins and I will be tremendously good friends.  I’m quite willing to be known as the buggy professor.  But you were trying to explain why I couldn’t fall in love with you.  I suppose you mean that you do not want me to.”

“Oh, not that at all,” she hastened to assure him.  Then she stopped.  “Yes,” she said honestly, “that is true, too.  But that isn’t what I was trying to say.  I was just saying that no one realizes any more than I how perfectly impossible it would be for a clever, grown-up, brilliant professor to fall in love with such an idiot as I am.  That’s all.  I meant it for a compliment,” she added, seeing he was not well pleased.