Professor Dustin, an elderly and myopic educator and the author of a monograph on the Grübe method, had charge of the examination when Miss Frayn appeared. I found Chester smoking a vile pipe in my lodgings when I came home.
"Say, Oc," said he, "this four-eyed old trilobite won't do. You've got to get in here and do business yourself."
Conjecturing that he meant Professor Dustin, I inferred that Miss Frayn's papers had been rejected. A glance justified the professor. She had given Richmond as the capital of the United States. A question in physiology called for a description of the iris, and Miss Frayn had answered that, further than that, "she" was a naiad, a dryad, or a nymph, and was pursued by Boreas, or Eolus, or Zephyrus until, turned into a flower, she could say nothing about Iris. The handwriting and drawing were beautiful; but the pages of mathematics were mostly blank, save for certain splashy discolorations presumably of lachrymatory origin, denoting lack of self-control and scholastic weakness.
"It is absurd," said I, "to think of certifying her. While she has a certain measure of intelligence—"
"A certain measure!" shouted Chester. "If you weren't a natural-born saphead, I'd—! Come up to Aunt Judith's!"
I went with him, firm in that solid self-control which gives fixity of character to my nature. I saw in its true light the amiable weakness of my relatives which made them slaves to this girl. I felt as stern and austere as a public officer should, and looked it, I believe, for mother was quite in a flutter as she asked me to read a clipping from an eastern Tennessee paper describing the departure from that region of the Frayns.
From this I learned that Miss Frayn and the colonel had been the last of the Frayns, the family having been exterminated in the Frayn-Harrod feud. The colonel had been an engineer in Lee's army. He had given public notice on leaving that at noon he would nail to the front door of the court-house, with the revolver of Boone Harrod, the last enemy shot by the colonel, his version of the origin of the feud. He had carried out this parting piece of bravado with no disturbance except an exchange of shots as the train moved away from the station. I was horrified. Was a person in this barbarous state of culture asking me, Oscar Boggs, member of the National Sub-Committee on Tone-Deafness—!
"Okky," said my mother, from behind, "this is Miss Frayn!"
I looked at her, and was suddenly impressed with the non-existence of the material universe, except as centered in and consisting of eyes of a ruddy brown like those of fine horses, rufous hair surrounding the small head like a nimbus, and a fused mass of impressions made up of the abstract concepts of trimness, fire, elegance, and unconquerability. I have reported the matter to the society for psychical research, but have received no answer as yet. It was clearly abnormal.
She placed her arm about my mother's waist and looked most respectfully at me.