The Tutor blushed and hesitated.  “Perhaps you would like to ask one of them,” said Number Five.  “Which one shall it be?” “It makes no difference to me which,” he answered, “but I do not see that we need either.”  Number Five did not press the matter further.  So the young Tutor and Number Five read together pretty regularly, and came to depend upon their meeting over a book as one of their stated seasons of enjoyment.  He is so many years younger than she is that I do not suppose he will have to pass par la, as most of her male friends have done.  I tell her sometimes that she reminds me of my Alma Mater, always young, always fresh in her attractions, with her scholars all round her, many of them graduates, or to graduate sooner or later.

What do I mean by graduates?  Why, that they have made love to her, and would be entitled to her diploma, if she gave a parchment to each one of them who had had the courage to face the inevitable.  About the Counsellor I am, as I have said, in doubt.  Who wrote that “I Like You and I Love You,” which we found in the sugar-bowl the other day?  Was it a graduate who had felt the “icy dagger,” or only a candidate for graduation who was afraid of it?  So completely does she subjugate those who come under her influence that I believe she looks upon it as a matter of course that the fateful question will certainly come, often after a brief acquaintance.  She confessed as much to me, who am in her confidence, and not a candidate for graduation from her academy.  Her graduates—­her lambs I called them—­are commonly faithful to her, and though now and then one may have gone off and sulked in solitude, most of them feel kindly to her, and to those who have shared the common fate of her suitors.  I do really believe that some of them would be glad to see her captured by any one, if such there can be, who is worthy of her.  She is the best of friends, they say, but can she love anybody, as so many other women do, or seem to?  Why shouldn’t our Musician, who is evidently fond of her company, and sings and plays duets with her, steal her heart as Piozzi stole that of the pretty and bright Mrs. Thrale, as so many music-teachers have run away with their pupils’ hearts?  At present she seems to be getting along very placidly and contentedly with her young friend the Tutor.  There is something quite charming in their relations with each other.  He knows many things she does not, for he is reckoned one of the most learned in his literary specialty of all the young men of his time; and it can be a question of only a few years when some first-class professorship will be offered him.  She, on the other hand, has so much more experience, so much more practical wisdom, than he has that he consults her on many every-day questions, as he did, or made believe do, about that of making love to one of the two Annexes.  I had thought, when we first sat round the tea-table, that she was good for the bit of romance I wanted; but since she has undertaken to be a kind of half-maternal