which you revel, and then, my sonny, cut your analysis out. It is for
your own guidance, not the reader's.

"'I have often noticed,' you are always saying. The story has nothing
to do with you. Obliterate yourself. I see that will be your stiffest
job.

"Stop preaching. It seems to me the pulpit is where you should look
for the treasure. Nineteen, and you are already as didactic as
seventy."

And so on. Over his exercises Tommy was now engrossed for so long a
period that, as he sits there, you may observe his legs slowly
lengthening and the coming of his beard. No, his legs lengthened as he
sat with his feet in the basket; but I feel sure that his beard burst
through prematurely some night when he was thinking too hard about the
ladies.

There were no ladies in the exercises, for, despite their altercation
about noses, Pym knew that on this subject Tommy's mind was a blank.
But he recognized the sex's importance, and becoming possessed once
more of a black coat, marched his pupil into the somewhat shoddy
drawing-rooms that were still open to him, and there ordered Tommy to
be fascinated for his future good. But it was as it had always been.
Tommy sat white and speechless and apparently bored; could not even
say, "You sing with so much expression!" when the lady at the
pianoforte had finished.

"Shyness I could pardon," the exasperated Pym would roar; "but want of
interest is almost immoral. At your age the blood would have been