A Little Rebel | Page 7

says the professor, ever so kindly.
"No--'Pet,'" corrects she. "It's shorter, you know, and far easier to say."
"Oh!" says the professor. To him it seems very difficult to say. Is it possible she is going to ask him to call her by that familiar--almost affectionate--name? The girl must be mad.
"Yes--much easier," says Perpetua; "you will find that out, after a bit, when you have got used to calling me by it. Are you going now, Mr. Curzon? Going so soon?"
"I have classes," says the professor.
"Students?" says she. "You teach them? I wish I was a student. I shouldn't have been given over to Aunt Jane then, or," with a rather wilful laugh, "if I had been I should have led her, oh!" rapturously, "such a life!"
It suggests itself to the professor that she is quite capable of doing that now, though she is not of the sex male.
"Good-bye," says he, holding out his hand.
"You will come soon again?" demands she, laying her own in it.
"Next week--perhaps."
"Not till then? I shall be dead then," says she, with a rather mirthless laugh this time. "Do you know that you and Aunt Jane are the only two people in all London whom I know?"
"That is terrible," says he, quite sincerely.
"Yes. Isn't it?"
"But soon you will know people. Your aunt has acquaintances. They--surely they will call; they will see you--they----"
"Will take an overwhelming fancy to me? just as you have done," says she, with a quick, rather curious light in her eyes, and a tilting of her pretty chin. "There! go," says she, "I have some work to do; and you have your classes. It would never do for you to miss them. And as for next week!--make it next month! I wouldn't for the world be a trouble to you in any way."
"I shall come next week," says the professor, troubled in somewise by the meaning in her eyes. What is it? Simple loneliness, or misery downright? How young she looks--what a child! That tragic air does not belong to her of right. She should be all laughter, and lightness, and mirth----
"As you will," says she; her tone has grown almost haughty; there is a sense of remorse in his breast as he goes down the stairs. Has he been kind to old Wynter's child? Has he been true to his trust? There had been an expression that might almost be termed despair in the young face as he left her. Her face, with that expression on it, haunts him all down the road.
Yes. He will call next week. What day is this? Friday. And Friday next he is bound to deliver a lecture somewhere--he is not sure where, but certainly somewhere. Well, Saturday then he might call. But that----
Why not call Thursday--or even Wednesday?
Wednesday let it be. He needn't call every week, but he had said something about calling next week, and--she wouldn't care, of course--but one should keep their word. What a strange little face she has--and strange manners, and--not able to get on evidently with her present surroundings.
What an old devil that aunt must be.
CHAPTER IV.
"Dear, if you knew what tears they shed, Who live apart from home and friend, To pass my house, by pity led, Your steps would tend."
He makes the acquaintance of the latter very shortly. But requires no spoon to sup with her, as Miss Majendie's invitations to supper, or indeed to luncheon, breakfast or dinner, are so few and rare that it might be rash for a hungry man to count on them.
The professor, who has felt it to be his duty to call on his ward regularly every week, has learned to know and (I regret to say) to loathe that estimable spinster christened Jane Majendie.
After every visit to her house he has sworn to himself that "this one" shall be his last, and every Wednesday following he has gone again. Indeed, to-day being Wednesday in the heart of June, he may be seen sitting bolt upright in a hansom on his way to the unlovely house that holds Miss Jane Majendie.
As he enters the dismal drawing-room, where he finds Miss Majendie and her niece, it becomes plain, even to his inexperienced brain, that there has just been a row on somewhere.
Perpetua is sitting on a distant lounge, her small vivacious face one thunder-cloud. Miss Majendie, sitting on the hardest chair this hideous room contains, is smiling. A terrible sign. The professor pales before it.
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Curzon," says Miss Majendie, rising and extending a bony hand. "As Perpetua's guardian, you may perhaps have some influence over her. I say 'perhaps' advisedly, as I scarcely dare to hope anyone could influence a mind so distorted as hers."
"What is it?" asks the professor nervously--of Perpetua, not of Miss Majendie.
"I'm dull," says Perpetua