And she did say "Mister," and she said it so sweetly, and looked up into Professor Rayburn's face so brightly, and with happiness so evident and so girlish, that the staid professor felt a quick unaccountable throbbing down somewhere beneath his coat. He did look eager! There was no doubt of it. And he looked at Prudence, continuously.
"Just like ordinary men, isn't he?" whispered Fairy to Eugene Babler,—called "Babbie," for short and for humiliation,—for he enjoyed the reputation of being a "talker" even among college men!
The three young couples struck off briskly down the road, creek-ward, and Prudence followed sedately with her professor.
"Fairy says it was perfectly disgusting of me to tell you I didn't know anything about bugs," she said comfortably. "But I thought maybe, you were one of those professors who like one thing so much they can't be interested in anything else. And I wanted to warn you. But I guess you aren't that kind, after all?"
"Oh, no, indeed," he assured her fervently, looking deep into her blue eyes. "I like bugs, it is true. But really I like other things, one thing at least, much better."
"Is it a riddle?" she inquired. "Am I supposed to guess?"
"It isn't a riddle, but you may guess. Think hard, now! It's a serious matter. Please don't say 'food.'"
"If I get below seventy will I be put down a grade?" she asked. Then with intense solemnity, "I guess girls."
They laughed together, youthfully. "You are right," he said.
And with a sigh of relief, Prudence answered, "That's the first time I ever got a hundred in anything in my life. I was very much accustomed to eighties when I was in school. I am very common and unbrilliant," she assured him. "Fairy says you are perfectly horribly clever——"