"Ah, how kind, how good you are to me!" she cried, seizing his slender,
wrinkled hand and holding it between her soft palms. "How glad papa must
be to know it! It almost seems like having him again. Must you go?
Good-night."

And, innocently, as if to her father, she held up her face for a kiss.

The professor turned red, turned pale, hesitated, faltered, and then
kissed her reverently on her forehead,--or, if the truth must be told,
on her soft, frizzled hair, which, according to the fashion of the day,
hung almost over her eyes.

Two evenings in the week after this were devoted to arithmetic. The
professor was firm--as a rule; but when her joyous "Oh, I see _exactly_
how it's done, now!" followed his patient reiteration of rules and
explanations, how could he help rewarding himself by a glance at the
glowing face? how could he keep his eyes permanently fixed upon that
stony-hearted slate?

So it went on through the winter and spring, till it was nearing the
time for the summer vacation. The professor knew only too well that
Rosamond had been invited to spend it with some distant
cousins,--distant in both senses of the word,--and that on her return
she would be swallowed up by the academy and would brighten the dingy
boarding-house no more. How could he bear it? His arid, silent life had
never had a song in it before. Must the song die out in silence?

When the last evening came, and when, realizing the long separation
before them, she once more held up her face for a kiss, with trembling
lips and blue eyes swimming in tears, as she told him how she should