How clearly I see now into the mechanism of the Young Girl’s audacious contrivance for regulating our table-talk!  Her brain is tired half the time, and she is too nervous to listen patiently to what a quieter person would like well enough, or at least would not be annoyed by.  It amused her to invent a scheme for managing the headstrong talkers, and also let off a certain spirit of mischief which in some of these nervous girls shows itself in much more questionable forms.  How cunning these half-hysteric young persons are, to be sure!  I had to watch a long time before I detected the telegraphic communication between the two conspirators.  I have no doubt she had sedulously schooled the little monkey to his business, and found great delight in the task of instruction.

But now that our Scheherezade has become a scholar instead of a teacher, she seems to be undergoing a remarkable transformation.  Astronomy is indeed a noble science.  It may well kindle the enthusiasm of a youthful nature.  I fancy at times that I see something of that starry light which I noticed in the young man’s eyes gradually kindling in hers.  But can it be astronomy alone that does it?  Her color comes and goes more readily than when the old Master sat next her on the left.  It is having this young man at her side, I suppose.  Of course it is.  I watch her with great, I may say tender interest.  If he would only fall in love with her, seize upon her wandering affections and fancies as the Romans seized the Sabine virgins, lift her out of herself and her listless and weary drudgeries, stop the outflow of this young life which is draining itself away in forced literary labor—­dear me, dear me—­if, if, if—­

               “If I were God
     An’ ye were Martin Elginbrod!”

I am afraid all this may never be.  I fear that he is too much given to lonely study, to self-companionship, to all sorts of questionings, to looking at life as at a solemn show where he is only a spectator.  I dare not build up a romance on what I have yet seen.  My reader may, but I will answer for nothing.  I shall wait and see.

The old Master and I have at last made that visit to the Scarabee which we had so long promised ourselves.

When we knocked at his door he came and opened it, instead of saying, Come in.  He was surprised, I have no doubt, at the sound of our footsteps; for he rarely has a visitor, except the little monkey of a boy, and he may have thought a troop of marauders were coming to rob him of his treasures.  Collectors feel so rich in the possession of their rarer specimens, that they forget how cheap their precious things seem to common eyes, and are as afraid of being robbed as if they were dealers in diamonds.  They have the name of stealing from each other now and then, it is true, but many of their priceless possessions would hardly tempt a beggar.  Values are artificial:  you will not be able to get ten cents of the year 1799 for a dime.