“More work for me,” she said, smiling; “here is an invitation to deliver six lectures on electro-optics.” The girl looked at her admiringly.
“Absolutely I’ve forgotten the very meaning of the words; and as for lecturing!” she broke off with a little laugh. “Are you going to give them?”
“Yes: it makes a great deal of work for me, but I never refuse such invitations. Besides I shall be able to take these lectures almost bodily from a little book I am getting out.” Professor Arbuthnot went over to the desk and lifted up a pile of manuscript, and smiled indulgently at the girl’s exclamation of awe.
“It isn’t much,” she went on. “Only some experiments I have been making in the optical effects of powerful magnets. They turned out very prettily. I have a good deal of hard work to do on the book yet. I shall stay here a week or two longer, quite alone, and finish it all up.”
The girl touched the papers reverently.
“Here is a note I have just received from Professor ——” (Miss Arbuthnot named one of the most distinguished authorities of the day on magnetism and electricity). “I sent him some of the first proof-sheets, and he says he’s delighted with them. We are great friends.”
The girl’s awe and admiration increased with every movement. She looked at the small, slight woman whose intelligent, ugly face had an almost child-like simplicity of expression, contrasting strangely enough with the wrinkled, bloodless skin and piercing eyes. Her hair, which was parted and brushed severely back, was thickly sprinkled with gray.
She gasped a little. “You actually know him—know Professor ——?”
Miss Arbuthnot laughed. “Oh, yes,” she said; “we often work together. We get along famously; we are ‘sympathetic’ in our work, as the French say.”
The girl swept her a mock courtesy.