It’s the same story we all have to tell,—­said he, when I had done reading.—–­We are all asking questions nowadays.  I should like to hear him read some of his verses himself, and I think some of the other boarders would like to.  I wonder if he wouldn’t do it, if we asked him!  Poets read their own compositions in a singsong sort of way; but they do seem to love ’em so, that I always enjoy it.  It makes me laugh a little inwardly to see how they dandle their poetical babies, but I don’t let them know it.  We must get up a select party of the boarders to hear him read.  We’ll send him a regular invitation.  I will put my name at the head of it, and you shall write it.

—­That was neatly done.  How I hate writing such things!  But I suppose I must do it.

VIII

The Master and I had been thinking for some time of trying to get the Young Astronomer round to our side of the table.  There are many subjects on which both of us like to talk with him, and it would be convenient to have him nearer to us.  How to manage it was not quite so clear as it might have been.  The Scarabee wanted to sit with his back to the light, as it was in his present position.  He used his eyes so much in studying minute objects, that he wished to spare them all fatigue, and did not like facing a window.  Neither of us cared to ask the Man of Letters, so called, to change his place, and of course we could not think of making such a request of the Young Girl or the Lady.  So we were at a stand with reference to this project of ours.

But while we were proposing, Fate or Providence disposed everything for us.  The Man of Letters, so called, was missing one morning, having folded his tent—­that is, packed his carpet-bag—­with the silence of the Arabs, and encamped—­that is, taken lodgings—­in some locality which he had forgotten to indicate.

The Landlady bore this sudden bereavement remarkably well.  Her remarks and reflections; though borrowing the aid of homely imagery and doing occasional violence to the nicer usages of speech, were not without philosophical discrimination.

—­I like a gentleman that is a gentleman.  But there’s a difference in what folks call gentlemen as there is in what you put on table.  There is cabbages and there is cauliflowers.  There is clams and there is oysters.  There is mackerel and there is salmon.  And there is some that knows the difference and some that doos n’t.  I had a little account with that boarder that he forgot to settle before he went off, so all of a suddin.  I sha’n’t say anything about it.  I’ve seen the time when I should have felt bad about losing what he owed me, but it was no great matter; and if he ’ll only stay away now he ’s gone, I can stand losing it, and not cry my eyes out nor lay awake all night neither.  I never had ought to have took him.  Where he come from and where he’s gone to is unbeknown to me.  If he’d only smoked good tobacco, I wouldn’t have said a word; but it was such dreadful stuff, it ’ll take a week to get his chamber sweet enough to show them that asks for rooms.  It doos smell like all possest.