the parlour, Sarah was perturbedly picking up the broken pieces of
a teacup, which the Professor had knocked off the table in his
precipitate advance to meet me at the door.

"I don't know what would have happened, Walter," said my mother,
"if you had delayed much longer. Pesca has been half mad with
impatience, and I have been half mad with curiosity. The
Professor has brought some wonderful news with him, in which he
says you are concerned; and he has cruelly refused to give us the
smallest hint of it till his friend Walter appeared."

"Very provoking: it spoils the Set," murmured Sarah to herself,
mournfully absorbed over the ruins of the broken cup.

While these words were being spoken, Pesca, happily and fussily
unconscious of the irreparable wrong which the crockery had
suffered at his hands, was dragging a large arm-chair to the
opposite end of the room, so as to command us all three, in the
character of a public speaker addressing an audience. Having
turned the chair with its back towards us, he jumped into it on
his knees, and excitedly addressed his small congregation of three
from an impromptu pulpit.

"Now, my good dears," began Pesca (who always said "good dears"
when he meant "worthy friends"), "listen to me. The time has
come--I recite my good news--I speak at last."

"Hear, hear!" said my mother, humouring the joke.

"The next thing he will break, mamma," whispered Sarah, "will be