I am obliged to confess that he has shown occasional marks of inattention even while the Master was discoursing in a way that I found agreeable enough.  I am quite sure it is no intentional disrespect to the old Master.  It seems to me rather that he has become interested in the astronomical lessons he has been giving the Young Girl.  He has studied so much alone, that it is naturally a pleasure to him to impart some of his knowledge.  As for his young pupil, she has often thought of being a teacher herself, so that she is of course very glad to acquire any accomplishment that may be useful to her in that capacity.  I do not see any reason why some of the boarders should have made such remarks as they have done.  One cannot teach astronomy to advantage, without going out of doors, though I confess that when two young people go out by daylight to study the stars, as these young folks have done once or twice, I do not so much wonder at a remark or suggestion from those who have nothing better to do than study their neighbors.

I ought to have told the reader before this that I found, as I suspected, that our innocent-looking Scheherezade was at the bottom of the popgun business.  I watched her very closely, and one day, when the little monkey made us all laugh by stopping the Member of the Haouse in the middle of a speech he was repeating to us,—­it was his great effort of the season on a bill for the protection of horn-pout in Little Muddy River,—­I caught her making the signs that set him going.  At a slight tap of her knife against her plate, he got all ready, and presently I saw her cross her knife and fork upon her plate, and as she did so, pop! went the small piece of artillery.  The Member of the Haouse was just saying that this bill hit his constitooents in their most vital—­when a pellet hit him in the feature of his countenance most exposed to aggressions and least tolerant of liberties.  The Member resented this unparliamentary treatment by jumping up from his chair and giving the small aggressor a good shaking, at the same time seizing the implement which had caused his wrath and breaking it into splinters.  The Boy blubbered, the Young Girl changed color, and looked as if she would cry, and that was the last of these interruptions.

I must own that I have sometimes wished we had the popgun back, for it answered all the purpose of “the previous question” in a deliberative assembly.  No doubt the Young Girl was capricious in setting the little engine at work, but she cut short a good many disquisitions that threatened to be tedious.  I find myself often wishing for her and her small fellow-conspirator’s intervention, in company where I am supposed to be enjoying myself.  When my friend the politician gets too far into the personal details of the quorum pars magna fui, I find myself all at once exclaiming in mental articulation, Popgun!  When my friend the story-teller begins that protracted narrative which has often emptied me of all my voluntary laughter for the evening, he has got but a very little way when I say to myself, What wouldn’t I give for a pellet from that popgun!  In short, so useful has that trivial implement proved as a jaw-stopper and a boricide, that I never go to a club or a dinner-party, without wishing the company included our Scheherezade and That Boy with his popgun.