"You must be mad!" says he.
"Mad? Why?" asks she.
"To come here. Here! And at this hour!"
"There was no other place: and I wasn't going to live under her roof another second. I said to myself that she was my aunt, but you were my guardian. Both of you have been told to look after me, and I prefer to be looked after by you. It is so simple," says she, with a suspicion of contempt in her tone, "that I wonder why you wonder at it. As I preferred you—of course I have come to live with you."
"You can't!" gasps the professor, "you must go back to Miss
Majendie at once!"
"To her! I'm not going back," steadily. "And even if I would," triumphantly, "I couldn't. As she sleeps at the top of the house (to get air, she says), and so does her maid, you might ring until you were black in the face, and she wouldn't hear you."
"Well! you can't stay here!" says the professor, getting off the table and addressing her with a truly noble attempt at sternness.
"Why can't I?" There is some indignation in her tone. "There's lots of room here, isn't there?"
"There is no room!" says the professor. This is the literal truth.
"The house is full. And—and there are only men here."
"So much the better!" says Perpetua, with a little frown and a great deal of meaning. "I'm tired of women—they're horrid. You're always kind to me—at least," with a glance, "you always used to be, and _you're _a man! Tell one of your servants to make me up a room somewhere."