"A man with your development is made to be taken in," said Mr. Squills,
consolingly.

"Do you hear that, my own Kitty? And have you the heart to blame Jack
any longer,--a poor creature cursed with a bump that would take in the
Stock Exchange? And can any one resist his bump, Squills?"

"Impossible!" said the surgeon, authoritatively.

"Sooner or later it must involve him in its airy meshes,--eh, Squills?-
entrap him into its fatal cerebral cell. There his fate waits him, like
the ant-lion in its pit."

"Too true," quoth Squills. "What a phrenological lecturer you would have
made!"

"Go then, my love," said my father, "and lay no blame but on this
melancholy cavity of mine, where cautiousness--is not! Go, and let Sisty
have some supper; for Squills says that he has a fine development of the
mathematical organs, and we want his help. We are hard at work on
figures, Pisistratus."

My mother looked broken-hearted, and, obeying submissively, stole to the
door without a word. But as she reached the threshold she turned round
and beckoned to me to follow her.

I whispered my father and went out. My mother was standing in the hall,
and I saw by the lamp that she had dried her tears, and that her face,
though very sad, was more composed.