The professor glanced at the expectant young face turned toward him, and he could not but admit that his estimate of its owner’s intelligence had been well within the truth. 223
“You think a sun-dial would make it the prettiest garden in Dunbridge?”
“I’m sure it would.”
“And that is what you are aiming at?”
“Yes.”
“Now, I have noticed that when you have got what you are aiming at you lose interest in it.”
“O Papa!”
“There was tennis,” he went on, marking off the list on a combative forefinger, “and cookery; there was the Polyglot Club, and the Sketching Club, and––”
“But, Papa! They were every one of them good things, and I got a lot out of them; truly, I did.”
“No doubt; but as soon as you could play tennis, or sketch a pine tree, or toss an omelette a little better than the other girls, you had squeezed your orange dry.”