"May I ask how you knew I had a ward?"
"That should go without telling. I arrived here to-night to find you absent and Mrs. Mulcahy in possession, pretending to dust the furniture. She asked me to sit down—I obeyed her.
"'How's the professor?'" said I.
"'Me dear!' said she, 'that's a bad story. He's that distracted over a young lady that his own mother wouldn't know him!'
"I acknowledge I blushed. I went even so far as to make a few pantomimic gestures suggestive of the horror I was experiencing, and finally I covered my face with my handkerchief. I regret to say that Mrs. Mulcahy took my modesty in bad part.
"'Arrah! git out wid ye!' says she, 'ye scamp o' the world. 'Tis a ward the masther has taken an' nothin' more.'
"I said I thought it was quite enough, and asked if you had taken it badly, and what the doctor thought of you. But she wouldn't listen to me.
"'Look here, Misther Hardinge,' said she. 'I've come to the conclusion that wards is bad for the professor. I haven't seen the young lady, I confess, but I'm cock-sure that she's got the divil's own temper!'" Hardinge pauses, and turns to the professor—"Has she?" says he.
"N——o,"—says the professor—a little frowning lovely crimson face rises before him—and then a laughing one. "No," says he more boldly, "she is a little impulsive, perhaps, but——"
"Just so. Just so," says Mr. Hardinge pleasantly, and then, after a kindly survey of his companion's features, "She is rather a trouble to you, old man, isn't she?"