"Your physiognomy, my young friend. Are you happy with such a face as that?'
"Such a face?"
"Yes; I tell you that you look as if you had just parted with all your hopes—as if some adverse fate had deprived you of the privilege of living in this temple of Thespis and the muses. You could not look more doleful if I had threatened never to read any more of my great poem to you."
"Couldn't?" said Verty, listlessly.
"No."
The young man only replied with a sigh.
"There it is—you are groaning. Come; have you quarreled with your mistress?"
Verty colored, and his head sank.
"Please don't ask me, sir," he said; "I have not been very happy to-day—everything has gone wrong. I had better get to my work, sir,—I may forget it."
And with a look of profound discouragement, which seemed to be reflected in the sympathizing face of Longears, who had stretched himself at his master's feet and now lay gazing at him, Verty opened the record he had been copying, and began to write.