“Why, the Warden will most likely be the new Emperor!” my Lady explained. “Where could we find a better? Unless, perhaps——” she glanced at her husband.
“Where indeed!” the Professor fervently responded, quite failing to take the hint.
The Vice-Warden resumed the thread of his discourse. “The reason I mentioned it, Professor, was to ask you to be so kind as to preside at the Election. You see it would make the thing respectable—no suspicion of anything underhand——”
“I fear I ca’n’t, your Excellency!” the old man faltered. “What will the Warden——”
“True, true!” the Vice-Warden interrupted. “Your position, as Court-Professor, makes it awkward, I admit. Well, well! Then the Election shall be held without you.”
“Better so, than if it were held within me!” the Professor murmured with a bewildered air, as if he hardly knew what he was saying. “Bed, I think your Highness said, and a cooling-draught?” And he wandered dreamily back to where Uggug sulkily awaited him.
I followed them out of the room, and down the passage, the Professor murmuring to himself, all the time, as a kind of aid to his feeble memory, “C, C, C; Couch, Cooling-Draught, Correct-Grammar,” till, in turning a corner, he met Sylvie and Bruno, so suddenly that the startled Professor let go of his fat pupil, who instantly took to his heels.
CHAPTER X.
THE OTHER PROFESSOR.
“We were looking for you!” cried Sylvie, in a tone of great relief. “We do want you so much, you ca’n’t think!”
“What is it, dear children?” the Professor asked, beaming on them with a very different look from what Uggug ever got from him.