I feel within me a desire to assist in the blossoming forth of what I plainly discover to be this young person's real self. I shall not count as wasted the hours I may devote to this altruistic and disinterested endeavour. My payment shall be the consciousness of a duty well performed—that and nothing more. Indeed, at this moment, as I indite this pledge, speculation as to its outcome engenders in me an uplifting of the spirit which bodes well for the future fruitage of my ambition.
In such mood was I when, shortly having quitted the company of Miss Hamm, I met Miss Primleigh. She suggested another excursion into the wildwood. Upon plea of a slight indisposition, but without explaining its symptoms, I excused myself and continued upon my way. I felt that I should prefer for the nonce to be alone. I shall ever value my friendship with Miss Primleigh as a great privilege, for in truth she is one of deep culture and profound mental attainments, but during the last few days I have several times detected myself in the act of wishing that she were not quite so statistical in her point of view and that her thoughts upon occasion might take a lighter trend than she evinces. I have even found myself desiring that to the eye she might present a plumper aspect, so to speak. For, in all charity, it is not to be denied that Miss Primleigh is what the world is pleased to call angular—painfully angular, I am afraid. Only to-day I noticed that her feet were large, or at least the shoes she wore lent a suggestion as of largeness. One owes it to oneself to make the best of one's personal appearance; this reflection came to me as I was turning away from Miss Primleigh. Possibly it is because she has failed to do so that I have found her company, in a measure, palling upon me here of late. Or can it be that spiritually I am outgrowing Miss Primleigh? I know not. I do but state the actual fact. Yet always I shall esteem her most highly.
To-night a sense of loneliness, a desire for the companionship of my kind, assails me. I can only opine that my blood is not thinning with the desired celerity. Beginning to-morrow I shall take a large tablespoonful of the tonic before meals instead of a dessert-spoonful.
A telephone was to-day installed in my study. Heretofore Fernbridge has been connected with the outer world only by a single telephone placed in the reception hall of our main building, but now, by Miss Waddleton's direction, each member of the faculty will hereafter enjoy the use of a separate instrument. Thus, without the surrender of any of its traditions, does Fernbridge keep abreast of the movements of this workaday world.
I think of nothing else of moment. I seek repose.
April the Twenty-second.—A most annoying incident has marred the day. As I think back upon it, adding deduction to deduction, superimposing surmise upon suspicion and suspicion in turn upon premise and fact, I am forced, against my very will, to conclude that, forgetting the dignity due one in my position, some person or persons to me unknown made a partially successful attempt to enact a practical joke of the most unpardonable character, having for a chosen victim none other than myself. I say partially successful, because at the moment when the plot approached its climax a subtle inner sense warned me to have a care and I refused to proceed farther, thus robbing the perpetrator or perpetrators of the anticipated laugh at my expense.
I shall set down the history of the entire affair. On yesterday, as I have stated, a telephone was duly installed within the precincts of my study. This forenoon I chanced to mention the matter to Miss Hamm whom, by a coincidence, I encountered as she was entering the seminary grounds. Indeed as I recall, I spoke upon the topic to a number of persons, including fellow instructors and students, remarking upon the added opportunities thus afforded for broadened intercourse through the medium of a device which has grown well-nigh indispensable to the conduct of our daily affairs. Some one—Miss Hamm as I remember, although it may have been another—was moved in this connection to ask me whether the inspection department of the local exchange had made the customary tests of the instrument in my study, to which I replied in the negative.
But at five of the clock or thereabout, as I sat here enjoying the refreshing solace of tea and basking in the mild spring air wafted to me through my opened windows, the telephone bell rang. Arising promptly, I went to where the instrument is affixed to the wall and responded to the call in the conventional manner by placing the receiver to my ear, applying my lips to the transmitter and uttering the word "Halloa!" twice, or possibly thrice repeated. Over the wire then a female voice spoke, enquiring if this were Doctor Fibble? Upon my stating that such was the case, the voice said:
"Doctor, this is the inspection department. We wish to test your telephone. Will you be so kind as to help us?"
To which I responded: