“There is only just enough to swear by,” said the Professor sadly. “We are a lot of half-tamed savages, after all, but we may be thankful that a capacity for almost infinite development is within us.”
“I wish to heaven we could get on a little faster,” exclaimed Hadria.
The incident proved, in the end, a fortunate one for the homeless, and almost starving terrier, of plebeian lineage, whose wail of distress had summoned two friends to the rescue. The creature had been ill-treated by some boys, who found Sunday afternoon hang heavy on their hands. The Professor carried the injured animal across the fields and through the woods, to Dunaghee.
Here the wounds were dressed, and here the grateful creature found a new and blissful home. His devotion to the Professor was unbounded; he followed him everywhere.
Hadria’s reverence and admiration rose to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. Her father laughed at her. “Just as if any decent fellow would not have done as much for a wounded brute!”
“There must have been a strange dearth of decent fellows in church that morning then.”
It was not merely the action, but the feeling revealed by the Professor’s words on that occasion, that had turned Hadria’s sentiment towards him, into one of worship.
Algitha warned her that even the Professor was human.
Hadria said she did not believe it, or rather she believed that he was inordinately, tenderly, superlatively human, and that he had gone many steps farther in that direction than the rest of his generation. He was dowered with instincts and perceptions belonging to some kinder, nobler race than ours.
Miss Du Prel looked grave. She took occasion to mention that the Professor had never ceased to grieve for his wife, to whom he had been passionately attached, and that he, almost alone among men, would never love any other woman.