The proprietor of the lamp having disclaimed such a fancy, the strange lad said: "Well, I'll fix it for you, then. Sit steady."
He reached up an arm long as a monkey's, which shed drops of water on the writing-table, and the green glow suddenly faded out, leaving the Studio in total darkness.
Out of the Stygian gloom Charles said: "There's another light there. I'll—"
"I know. Thought I might as well look into that one, too, while I'm at it. Just give your globe and chimney a minute to cool."
"Oh, of course!—certainly."
"Don't s'pose you want to stand a new mantel for the lamp?"
"I'm enough of a sport, but I fear there's not a new one in the house."
"Hold it for me, please," said the boy.
A pinpoint of light had appeared in the blackness; it moved toward Charles's hand. He received the little searchlight, let it go out, hastily found and pushed the button again. And then Miss Angela's brother began to take his lamp all apart, cleaning it, blowing through it at unexpected places, and wiping the parts with a dark oily rag, which, luckily enough, he seemed to have in his coat-pocket.
The lad's single-mindedness, his un-selfconscious matter-of-factness had attracted Charles at sight. He recalled what Mary Wing had told him of Wallie Flower's struggles to get an education. Thus, as the light-repairing proceeded in the almost total darkness, a conversation grew up, at first largely question and answer. And the upshot of it was that Charles, as a tutor, offered to instruct Wallie Flower, free gratis, in German and English, the two college entrance subjects in which he was still somewhat deficient.