professional masters whom she had employed in the various countries of
her sojourn, and a disquisition upon their several lives and
characters, fortifying her statements by reference of doubtful points
to her daughter. This occupied some time, and Ferris listened to it all
with an abstracted air. At last he said, with a smile, "There was an
Italian priest came to see me this morning, who astonished me by
knowing English--with a brogue that he'd learned from an English priest
straight from Dublin; perhaps _he_ might do, Mrs. Vervain? He's
professionally pledged, you know, not to give the kind of annoyance
you've suffered from in teachers. He would do as well as Padre
Girolamo, I suppose."

"Do you really? Are you in earnest?"

"Well, no, I believe I'm not. I haven't the least idea he would do. He
belongs to the church militant. He came to me with the model of a
breech-loading cannon he's invented, and he wanted a passport to go to
America, so that he might offer his cannon to our government."

"How curious!" said Mrs. Vervain, and her daughter looked frankly into
Ferris's face. "But I know; it's one of your jokes."

"You overpraise me, Mrs. Vervain. If I could make such jokes as that
priest was, I should set up for a humorist at once. He had the touch of
pathos that they say all true pieces of humor ought to have," he went
on instinctively addressing himself to Miss Vervain, who did not
repulse him. "He made me melancholy; and his face haunts me. I should
like to paint him. Priests are generally such a snuffy, common lot. And
I dare say," he concluded, "he's sufficiently commonplace, too, though
he didn't look it. Spare your romance, Miss Vervain."