But that brought me no nearer to her, and at last a plan occurred to me by which the abyss of the area that separated us might possibly be bridged over. Nothing could be simpler than my device—and yet there was an audacity about it that rather startled me at first. It was this: the brass plate said "Prospectus within." Very well, all I had to do was to knock boldly and ask for one, which, after some natural hesitation, I did.
Any wild hope of obtaining an interview with Miss Polkinghorne was doomed to instant disappointment. I was received by the Professor himself, a tall, stout, flabby person, with sandy hair combed back over his brow and worn long behind, who showed a most sympathetic interest in me, inquiring whether I wished to be prepared for the Church, the Stage, or the Bar, or whether I had any idea of entering Parliament. I fear I allowed him to suppose the latter, although I am about as likely to get into Parliament as into an imperial pint measure; but I had to say something to account for my visit, and the tea-trade does not call for much in the way of oratorical skill from its votaries.
Our interview was brief, but I came away, not only with a prospectus, but with tickets, for which I paid cash, entitling me to a course of six lessons in elocution.
This was rather more than I had calculated upon—but, at least, it gave me the entrée to the house, and it might lead to something more.
It did not seem as if it was going to lead to much; the Professor's method of teaching was peculiar: he would post me in a study at the back of the house, where I was instructed to declaim some celebrated oration at the top of my voice while he retired upstairs to discover how far my voice would carry.
After twenty minutes or so he would return with the information, which I have no reason to disbelieve, that he had not heard a single word above the first landing.
Still I persevered, sustained by the thought that, when I was delivering the oration of Brutus over Cæsar, or the famous passage about the Queen of France and the "ten thousand swords leaping from their scabbards," my words might perchance reach Miss Polkinghorne's ear and excite in her a passing emotion.
But I came to the end of my tickets and still I was as far as ever from my goal, while the exertion of shouting had rendered me painfully husky.
