The Mayor of Warwick | Page 9

the polished bowl.
"But you have n't forgotten the dinner?" Leigh asked, perceiving that
the other was preparing to settle back in his chair for one of those
discursive talks in which his guests delighted.
"The dinner! I had quite forgotten it." And he put down the pipe with
evident reluctance. "Such is the power of preoccupation."
"We 're a tall set of men here," Leigh said, as the professor rose to his
feet. "You and the bishop and I would measure eighteen feet or more,
placed one above the other."
"Pelion on Ossa!" Cardington cried. "How much more impressive it
makes us seem than if you had merely stated that each of us was six
feet tall! It takes an astronomer to calculate great distances. I quite
compassionate those little fellows, our colleagues." His eyes twinkled
behind his rimless spectacles. "Just amuse yourself with these
photographs awhile. Not in your line, perhaps, but interesting to us
glow-worms that flit about in ruinous places. I 'll be with you in a few
moments."
Even from the room beyond he continued the conversation in his own

odd manner, passing to antipodal subjects by paths of association
beyond the guess of an imagination less vagrant than his own. With
Cardington conversation was a fine art. He loved the adequate or
picturesque word as a miner loves an ingot of gold, yet he was able to
display his linguistic stores without incurring the charge of pedantry,
much as certain women can carry without offence clothes that would
smother a more insignificant personality.
"We still have a few minutes to spare," he announced, when he
presently reappeared. "Now, which will you have, a Roman Catholic,
or an Episcopalian, or a Presbyterian beverage,--Benedictine, port wine,
or whiskey?"
Leigh's mood expanded in response to the hospitality. Here was a little
fling of the spirit of which he stood in need, a promise of comradeship
that was all the more welcome from the fact that his other colleagues
had kept him waiting in the vestibule of their regard.
"I'll drink your health in a little whiskey," he replied with alacrity.
"Quite right," Cardington commented, producing a bottle of Scotch. "I
hope you 'll find that this has the true Calvinistic flavour. And here's to
you likewise. May you yet discover the length, the depth, and the uses
of all the canals of Mars." Over the rim of his glass his eyes began to
brighten in a manner which his guest already knew to be a prophecy of
something good. "That was an excellent jest of the bishop's you told me
of yesterday, calling you Peter when he handed you the keys of the
door that leads to heaven. Now what did you say in reply?"
"Nothing," Leigh confessed. "He didn't give me fair warning of what
was coming."
"Then you lost the opportunity of your life. If you had only said, 'Thank
you, my Lord!' Even a Yankee bishop would have had no objection to
being my-lorded, you know. Ah, that would have been the retort
courteous, and the story is incomplete without it. By your kind
permission I shall tell it with that addendum."

"A footnote by Professor Cardington," Leigh suggested.
"No, no, not at all. I 'll work it into the text as your own. The story must
go down in history along with the classic jest in regard to the position
of the statue's outstretched palm. The bishop told you that, no doubt,
anticipating my own good offices."
"It may interest you to know," he went on, as they began to descend the
stairs, "that you are to meet a very charming young lady to-night. Miss
Wycliffe is a very remarkable young woman in some respects. Have
you yet had the pleasure of making her acquaintance?"
"What is she like?" Leigh asked, wondering whether the answer would
suggest in any way the young woman he had met the morning of his
arrival.
"I shall not allow my enthusiasm to betray me into an inadequate
description," Cardington declared. "I could no more make the subject
clear to you than you could explain to me the nth degree of x+z, if there
is any such expression in algebra, which I should n't be surprised to
discover is the case."
"Then I shall have to possess my soul in patience," Leigh answered,
with apparent indifference.
When they emerged from the shadow of the Hall, and plunged between
the lines of maples, they were obliged to go in single file, for the
narrowness of the way. The young mathematician glanced at the last
melancholy glow of the sunset which spread out in a faint, fan-shaped
aurora above a dun rampart of clouds. His love of nature was no less
keen than his appreciation of people and events. The mathematician
and