"I may leave school next week, Mr. Queed. I—don't think I'm going to graduate."
He looked up, surprised and displeased. "Why on earth do you think that?"
"Well, you see, they don't think I'm strong enough to keep up the work right now. The Doctor was here to-day, and that's what he says. It's silly, I think—I know I am."
Queed was playing the devil's tattoo with his pencil, scowling somewhat nervously. "Did you want to graduate particularly?"
A look of exquisite wistfulness swept the child's face, and was gone. "Yes, I wanted to—lots. But I won't mind so much after I've had time to get used to it. You know the way people are."
There was a silence, during which the young man wrestled with the sudden mad idea of offering to help Fifi with all her lessons each night—not merely with the difficulties—thus enabling her to keep up with her class with a minimum of work. Where such an impulse came from he could not conjecture. He put it down with a stern hand. Personally, he felt, he might be almost willing to make this splendid display of altruism; but for the sake of posterity and the common good, he could not dream of stealing so much time from the Magnum Opus.
"Well!" he said rather testily. "That is too bad."
"I know you'll be glad not to have me bothering you any more with my lessons, and all."
"I will not say that."
He looked at Fifi closely, examined her face in a searching, personal manner, which he had probably never before employed in reviewing a human countenance.