“Not a bit of it. Not one of them. Not half so well,” said Cashel, cheerfully, replying to as much of her speech as he understood.
“Perhaps the subject does not interest you,” she said, turning to him.
“On the contrary; I like it of all things,” said he, boldly.
“I can hardly say so much for my own interest in it. I am told that you are a student, Mr. Cashel Byron. What are your favorite studies?—or rather, since that is generally a hard question to answer, what are your pursuits?”
Alice listened.
Cashel looked doggedly at Lydia, and his color slowly deepened. “I am a professor,” he said.
“A professor of what? I know I should ask of where; but that would only elicit the name of a college, which would convey no real information to me.”
“I am a professor of science,” said Cashel, in a low voice, looking down at his left fist, which he was balancing in the air before him, and stealthily hitting his bent knee as if it were another person’s face.
“Physical or moral science?” persisted Lydia.
“Physical science,” said Cashel. “But there’s more moral science in it than people think.”