"'Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil—the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean.'"
"The gospel of ease, of which Tennyson is the apostle!" said Roy. "Sleep is never sweeter than when it comes to the laboring man, nor is the shore so welcome to him who never leaves it, as it is to the mariner who has gained it by toiling through the deep mid-ocean."
Jessie made a dissenting gesture.
"Le jeu—vaut-il la chandelle?"
"Yes—if rest and ease be the chief goods of life," was the rejoinder.
It was made gently and affectionately, but Jessie appealed to Mr. Wyllys, in whimsical vexation.
"Wouldn't anybody know that he is a college professor? He is a merciless logician, and logic was always a bore to me. I don't know the difference between a syllogism and a sequence. Poor Euna! what a fearful trial she had in her pupil!"
"You use the past tense, I observe!" Mr. Wyllys remarked, demurely.
Everybody was tempted to badinage in talking with her.
"Because my days of nominal pupilage are over. The trial remains in full force."