“Go your way, old fellow,” said Ned, catching the flea and pinning it with his pencil on the margin of his text-book; “but, mark my words, in three months from to-day your adored will have discarded you, and you will then be regretting the moments you have wasted on her.”
“That reminds me,” I said, taking down my book, “I must cram Greek for to-morrow.”
After an hour’s study we retired—Ned well prepared, I just half.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
Several days have passed, and I am still in dreamland with Miss Carrover. I manage to attend recitations, but that is all. The tutor’s instructions fall on an inattentive ear, and his questions receive random answers. My books are all neglected, and even when I try to study, my mind is so preoccupied that it proves a perfect Danæan sieve, and after an hour’s vacant rambling over a page I close the book, with a more confused idea of its contents than I had before I opened it.
I visit Miss Carrover every other evening, at least, and in the interim am thinking of a word she spoke, a smile she gave; or am forming rainbow conjectures as to how she will treat me when I next call.
A week after the events narrated in the last chapter, I received a letter from my father, saying that he had read my letter with some surprise, but that, while he feared my horse would prove an hindrance to study, he did not like to refuse my first request, and had accordingly started Reuben off with him the morning before; that he hoped I would not let it deter me from applying myself diligently to my books, but that my report at the close of the session might be, as it always had been in my other schools, perfect.
I examined the date of the letter and found that it had been delayed a day, so that Reuben and Phlegon, starting the day before, ought to reach the University that day. I made a minute calculation, and found that they would arrive by one o’clock, and so, with a sigh of repentance over my dereliction of duty, and a firm resolve to do better, I determined, as that was Friday, to snap lecture, and watch for Reuben, waiting for Monday to turn over my new leaf.